Chapter 2 - What Beckett Had Been ToldClayton did not confront Agnes immediately.
He wanted to.
Every part of him wanted to walk into the guest suite where she had locked herself and demand answers until the walls shook.
Instead, he sat beside Beckett’s bed.
Maddox slept in a crib beside them.
The baby had cried himself exhausted.
Beckett hadn’t slept at all.
Clayton noticed his son kept looking toward the door.
“What are you worried about?”
Beckett shrugged.
“Nothing.”
“Try again.”
A pause.
“Is Grandma leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
Beckett’s shoulders dropped slightly.
Relief.
Clayton hated seeing it.
“How long has she been treating you like this?”
Beckett looked down.
“Like what?”
“You know.”
“Mean?”
“Yes.”
Another shrug.
“Sometimes.”
“Since when?”
Beckett picked at the blanket.
“After Mom died.”
Clayton’s stomach tightened.
Agnes had moved into the Mercer house after Nora’s funeral.
Clayton had been grateful.
He was trying to run a company while raising a nine-year-old and a newborn through grief.
Agnes cooked.
Managed staff.
Handled appointments.
Stayed with the boys when Clayton traveled.
He had called it help.
Now he wondered what it had cost.
“What did she do?”
“She got mad when I talked about Mom.”
“Why?”
“She said it made Maddox confused.”
“Maddox is one.”
“I know.”
“Anything else?”
Beckett hesitated.
“She threw away some pictures.”
Clayton went still.
“What pictures?”
“The one from the beach.”
Daniel? No—Clayton corrected himself internally. Nora and the boys in Cape May.
“Which one?”
“Mom holding Maddox.”
Clayton remembered it.
Nora was thin from treatment.
Her hair covered by a scarf.
But she was smiling.
Maddox was six weeks old.
It had been on Beckett’s desk.
“What did Agnes say?”
“That dead people shouldn’t make the house sad.”
Clayton closed his eyes.
He had never seen the picture missing.
He had stopped entering Beckett’s room without knocking after Nora died because his son needed privacy.
Agnes had used that privacy.
“What else?”
Beckett looked toward Maddox.
“Sometimes she said he cried because Mom spoiled him.”
“Did she ever hit you?”
“No.”
“Did she hit Maddox before today?”
Beckett’s eyes filled.
“I don’t know.”
Clayton felt cold.
“What does that mean?”
“She fed him when I wasn’t allowed downstairs.”
Clayton stared.
“When weren’t you allowed downstairs?”
“When you were at work.”
“Every day?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“She said I watched her.”
Clayton’s heart accelerated.
“Watched her do what?”
Beckett shrugged.
“Stuff.”
That answer mattered.
Children rarely knew which details adults would consider important.
Clayton softened his voice.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Phone calls.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you hear names?”
Beckett thought.
“Uncle Warren.”
Clayton felt a chill.
“How often did Grandma talk to Uncle Warren?”
“A lot.”
“Did Warren come here?”
“Yes.”
Clayton sat straighter.
“When?”
“When you were gone.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“More than once?”
Beckett nodded.
That was new.
Warren lived forty minutes away and worked for the family investment company.
He visited socially.
But Clayton had no idea he had been coming privately while Clayton traveled.
“What did they talk about?”
Beckett’s face tightened with concentration.
“Mom.”
Clayton’s pulse jumped.
“What about her?”
“They said she made a mess.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
“One time Uncle Warren said, ‘If Clayton sees the report, he’ll destroy the family.’”
Clayton went completely still.
“What report?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Was that before Mom died?”
Beckett nodded slowly.
Clayton’s mouth went dry.
“You remember that?”
“I was hiding.”
“Where?”
“Pantry.”
The same pantry with the camera control.
“Why were you hiding?”
“Mom told me to stay upstairs.”
“Nora?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She was fighting with Grandma.”
Clayton stared.
“About what?”
Beckett lowered his voice.
“I heard Grandma say Mom should take us and leave.”
Clayton felt something twist inside him.
Nora had never told him.
Or maybe she had tried.
In those last weeks, she had been exhausted from postpartum complications and grief over her own father’s recent death. Clayton had been working too much.
He had told himself he was protecting the company during a volatile acquisition.
How many conversations had he postponed?
“Did Mom answer?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
Beckett looked up.
“She said, ‘They’re Clayton’s children, and you know it.’”
The room seemed to narrow.
Agnes calling the boys bastards.
Nora defending their paternity.
A report Warren feared Clayton would see.
Clayton’s voice became quiet.
“What happened next?”
“Grandma said, ‘I saw the test.’”
His stomach dropped.
“What test?”
“I don’t know.”
Beckett’s eyes filled.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Am I really yours?”
The question hit harder than Agnes’s slap on the livestream.
Clayton took Beckett’s face gently in both hands.
“Yes.”
“Did you do a test?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because I was there when you were born. Because your mother and I wanted you. Because nothing anyone says changes the fact that you are my son.”
Beckett swallowed.
“What about Maddox?”
“He’s my son too.”
“How do you know?”
Clayton almost said the same thing.
Then stopped.
Not because he doubted Nora.
Because he realized Beckett deserved an answer stronger than emotion if someone had been poisoning him with questions.
“We’ll prove it.”
Beckett looked frightened.
“You think Grandma could be right?”
“No.”
Clayton’s voice remained firm.
“I think someone wanted her to believe she was.”
That was different.
Downstairs, the security technician called him.
“Mr. Mercer?”
Clayton stepped into the hallway.
“What?”
“I found something in the system logs.”
“About Warren?”
“Yes.”
Clayton’s grip tightened.
“The account used to delete the footage was your mother’s administrator profile.”
“We know.”
“But the commands didn’t originate here every time.”
“Where?”
“Some were remote.”
“From Warren’s phone?”
“Looks like it.”
Clayton closed his eyes.
“How did he have access?”
“That’s the strange part.”
“What?”
“The device authorization predates your wife’s death by almost four months.”
Clayton stopped.
Warren had been connected to the home security system while Nora was alive.
Without Clayton knowing.
“Can you recover anything?”
“Maybe thumbnails. Diagnostic fragments. Local cache.”
“Do it.”
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“The kitchen camera wasn’t broken.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean it was manually disabled.”
“When?”
The technician gave him the date.
Clayton’s heart stopped.
The same night Nora had fallen down the rear staircase.
The fall that caused the head injury she never recovered from.
The accident that killed her three days later.
Clayton stared into Beckett’s dark hallway.
“What time was it turned off?”
“9:14 p.m.”
Nora’s emergency call had been logged at 9:37.
Twenty-three minutes.
Clayton whispered:
“And when was it turned back on?”
The technician answered.
May you like
“It wasn’t.”
Until Beckett touched the switch that afternoon.
Related Stories
