Chương 4 - Yellow Roses for Sophia
On the first morning Lily asked for her mother without crying, Ruby almost ruined it by answering too quickly.
They were sitting on the nursery rug building a crooked tower from wooden blocks. Lily had insisted every red block belonged at the bottom and every green one at the top. Ruby obeyed the architectural instructions, even when the tower leaned dangerously toward Bunny.
Then Lily discovered a yellow block beneath the toy chest. She turned it over in her hands and asked, "Mama yellow?"
Ruby felt the question land somewhere deep in her chest. She'd been told about the screaming, the nightmares, and the toy train. Nobody had warned her about a child suddenly offering a door into her grief while wearing pajamas covered in tiny ducks.
"Your mama liked yellow," Ruby said carefully. "Your daddy told me that."
Lily pressed the block against Bunny's nose. "Flowers?"
"Maybe. Should we ask him?"
"Daddy!" Lily shouted with the imperious confidence of a child who had recently discovered that her voice could summon an entire household.
Vincent arrived three minutes later, still holding a phone. Ruby saw him take in the calm nursery, the tower, the yellow block, and his daughter's expectant face. He ended his call without explaining why.
"Mama flowers?" Lily demanded.
Vincent went pale. He could face hostile men across a conference table without blinking, but one word from his daughter had apparently found a place his expensive armor could not protect.
"Yellow roses," he said. "She loved yellow roses."
"Show?"
He sat on the rug. For a moment, he looked at Ruby like a student preparing for an examination he had not studied for. Ruby gave him a small nod. He drew his phone from his pocket and searched through photographs until he found a picture of Sophia standing beside a garden wall, laughing so hard she had squeezed her eyes shut.
Lily examined the screen. "Mama pretty."
"Very pretty," Vincent answered.
"Mama gone."
Vincent's jaw worked. Then he said the sentence he had been unable to speak for eight months. "Yes, sweetheart. Mama died. She loved you very much, and she didn't want to leave you."
Lily touched Sophia's smiling face. Ruby looked away to give them privacy. A minute later, Lily abandoned the unfinished tower and climbed into her father's lap.
That evening, Vincent instructed the gardener to stop replacing every yellow rosebush with white ones. He had ordered the change after Sophia's funeral because the old garden was unbearable. He watched from the terrace as the gardener carried the first yellow roses back across the lawn.
"I thought I was protecting her," he admitted when Ruby joined him.
"You were protecting yourself too. That's understandable."
"It also meant she didn't have a photograph of her mother anywhere she could reach."
"You can change that."
He handed her a framed photograph. "Would it be all right to put this in Lily's room?"
"Ask her."
He stared at her, then laughed quietly. "I'm beginning to suspect that's your answer to everything."
"Only things that concern Lily."
By the next day, Sophia's photograph stood on Lily's low bookshelf beside Bunny's favorite basket.
Before Vincent returned the photograph, he asked Marta to bring out a small box of Sophia's things that had been stored in the attic. He found a recipe written in her looping handwriting, a ticket from their first trip together, and a sheet of music stained with coffee. None of the objects was remarkable, yet each seemed to have survived a disaster he had barely survived himself. He selected the photograph because it showed Sophia in the garden Lily could still visit. He placed the other keepsakes in a safe drawer, not to hide them again but to save them until his daughter was old enough to choose what she wanted to know.
"I was afraid every memory would hurt her," he admitted to Ruby.
"Some of them will," Ruby said. "That doesn't make them bad memories. My favorite photograph of my mother makes me cry every time I see it. I still wouldn't trade it for anything."
Vincent touched the edge of the frame and, for the first time, allowed himself to remember Sophia laughing without immediately forcing the image away. Lily carried it around the room until Ruby persuaded her that glass frames were safer on shelves. They chose a soft cloth photograph book for bedtime instead.
Dr. Morris approved of the change but offered a warning. "Don't mistake a peaceful morning for the end of her trauma," she told Vincent and Ruby. "Some days she'll want to see pictures. Other days she may not. Give her choices and let those choices change."
Ruby appreciated that honesty. Vincent seemed relieved by it. For once, there was no expensive solution he could buy and then discover had failed.
On Sunday, they attempted their first short walk beyond the estate's inner courtyard. Lily rode in a stroller with Bunny secured by a ribbon. The gardener waved. A dog barked in the distance. For seven wonderful minutes, Lily pointed at birds and demanded their names.
Then a car engine backfired on the public road.
Lily screamed and tried to climb out of the stroller. Ruby dropped to one knee, but Vincent reached them first. He stopped himself from grabbing his daughter and instead said, "It's Daddy. The noise has stopped. We're right here."
Lily flung herself toward him. He held her, breathing slowly while Ruby moved the stroller away from the road. Neither adult asked what she'd remembered. Neither told her there was nothing to fear. They simply went home.
"We failed," Vincent said afterward, sitting in the kitchen with Lily asleep against his shoulder.
"No," Ruby replied. "She got scared, and you helped her feel safe. That's the work."
He looked at his daughter. "You make it sound simple."
"It isn't. I cried because I burned toast yesterday. We all have our difficult moments."
Vincent laughed, and Lily stirred at the sound. She opened one sleepy eye, looked between them, and offered a faint, approving smile before closing it again.
Later, Ruby was returning an empty cup to the kitchen when she overheard Vincent arguing in the hall with Gabriel DeLuca. She had never heard either man raise his voice.
"The cameras didn't fail by accident," Vincent said.
"We can't prove that yet," Gabriel answered.
"Eleven minutes of missing footage on the day Sophia died? How much coincidence am I supposed to swallow?"
May you like
Ruby stepped backward before they noticed her. She had no wish to overhear family business. But she carried the words back to her room, where the photograph from the anonymous message still waited on her phone.
It occurred to her that someone might have been watching the Romano estate long before she arrived. And if that person had helped arrange Sophia's death, Lily's little yellow block had reopened a door somebody wanted permanently closed.
