Lucas Finds the Sunroom
Chapter 05 - Lucas Finds the Sunroom
Lucas recovered quickly.
That was one of his gifts and one of his sins.
Fear crossed his face in the hallway, sharp and naked, but by the time he entered the sunroom, it had been polished into concern.
“Margot,” he said. “There you are.”
There you are.
As if she had wandered.
As if he had been worried.
As if the woman beside her had not just placed twelve years of buried evidence into Margot’s hand.
Elaine’s fingers tightened on the blanket.
Lucas looked at her with a tenderness so false Margot wanted to laugh in his face.
“Elaine,” he said. “You look well.”
“No, I don’t.”
His smile faltered.
Elaine’s voice remained mild. “But I look better than you hoped.”
A woman at the card table coughed into her hand, badly disguising amusement.
Lucas turned back to Margot.
“I’ve been calling you.”
“My phone was off.”
“Why?”
“Battery.”
He looked at her handbag.
Margot looked at him.
A small battle. No witnesses would have noticed. Elaine noticed everything.
Lucas lowered his voice. “We should go home.”
“I’m visiting.”
“With a woman whose condition you do not understand.”
Elaine smiled. “Condition. He loves that word.”
Lucas ignored her.
“Margot, Anna called me. She’s worried.”
That was a lie, and Margot knew it because Anna had texted ten minutes earlier.
Almost there. Ben is asleep. Don’t let Dad know I’m coming.
Margot stood slowly.
“Let’s talk in the hallway.”
Lucas’s relief was visible. He thought he had moved her away from Elaine.
Good.
In the hallway, he reached for her elbow.
She stepped aside.
His eyes narrowed.
“What is going on with you?”
“I could ask the same.”
“You drive at night without telling me, visit a woman from my past, turn your phone off—this is exactly why Dr. Hale should evaluate you.”
There it was.
Not a threat.
A rehearsal.
Margot kept her voice soft. “You scheduled it already.”
Lucas went still.
“Clara called.”
His jaw tightened, then relaxed.
“She should not have.”
“No. I suppose not.”
“Margot, I am trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
“From embarrassing yourself.”
The hallway clock ticked once.
Margot looked at the man she had once chosen, the man who had known which tea she drank when she could not sleep, the man who had held Anna in the hospital nursery with tears in his eyes and still somehow become this.
“Lucas,” she said, “did you have Elaine declared impaired so you could take her trust?”
His face did not change.
That was answer enough.
“You’re tired,” he said.
“No. I am reading.”
For the first time, anger flashed.
“You have no idea what you’ve stumbled into.”
“Then explain it.”
He leaned closer.
“Eleanor Blake was reckless. Elaine was unstable. Charlotte is complicated. You are being manipulated by women who lost because they did not understand the game.”
Margot felt the key in her palm.
“And you understand it?”
“I survived it.”
“No, Lucas. You fed on it.”
His hand closed around her wrist.
Not hard enough to leave a mark.
Hard enough to remind her what kind of man he could be when softness failed.
She looked down at his hand.
He released her immediately.
Behind him, the elevator doors opened.
Anna stepped out, hair windblown, coat unbuttoned, her eight-year-old son Ben asleep against her shoulder.
“Mom?”
Lucas turned.
His face transformed.
“Anna, thank God. Your mother is confused.”
Anna looked from him to Margot.
Then to Elaine, visible through the sunroom doorway.
“No,” Anna said quietly. “I think she finally isn’t.”
Lucas’s mouth tightened.
“Do not insert yourself into adult matters.”
Anna laughed once.
“I’m thirty-four.”
“You are emotional.”
“No,” Anna said. “I’m my mother’s daughter.”
Margot had not known a sentence could feel like someone placing a blanket over her shoulders.
Lucas looked at Ben, sleeping heavily, then back at Anna.
“You brought my grandson into this?”
Anna’s face hardened.
“You don’t get to claim family after weaponizing it.”
Elaine called from the sunroom, “Tell him about page eleven.”
Lucas’s eyes cut toward her.
Anna stepped closer to Margot.
“What’s page eleven?”
Margot looked at Lucas.
His face had gone pale.
She opened her handbag and removed the photocopied guardianship petition.
“Page eleven,” Margot said, “is where your father planned to make me disappear.”
Anna took the paper.
As she read, Ben stirred on her shoulder and whispered, “Grandma?”
Margot touched his hair.
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
Lucas looked at them all—the wife he underestimated, the daughter he had tried to turn, the first wife he had buried alive, the grandson who would remember the tone of this hallway if not the words.
Then he did the one thing Margot did not expect.
He laughed.
“You think this is about a will?” he said.
Margot’s blood chilled.
May you like
Lucas leaned close enough that only she, Anna, and Elaine could hear.
“Eleanor Blake signed everything before she died. Including the paper that proves you were never her heir.”
