The hose dropped from his hands and hit the stone with a hollow crack.
Water pooled around his polished shoes, but he didn’t move. He just stared at the woman in green like he was seeing her for the first time.
“David—” she started, her voice suddenly careful, measured.
“Don’t.” The word came out quiet. Deadly quiet.
He turned back to his mother. She was still trembling, her arms wrapped around herself, her wet nightgown clinging to her frail frame. The maid stood protectively beside her, water dripping from both of them onto the perfect stone courtyard.
David shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it over his mother’s shoulders. It was too big, swallowing her small frame, but she clutched it like a lifeline.
“Are you hurt?” he asked softly.
She shook her head, but her lips were trembling too hard to speak.
He looked at the maid. “Take her inside. Get her dry clothes. Stay with her.”
The maid nodded quickly and gently guided the elderly woman toward the mansion. His mother glanced back once, her eyes filled with something between relief and fear, before disappearing through the doorway.
The courtyard felt bigger without them. Emptier.
David turned back to the woman in green.
She straightened, smoothing her gown, trying to reconstruct the armor of elegance she’d worn so easily moments before. “David, you don’t understand what happened—”
“I saw what happened.”
“She was being disrespectful. She was wandering around the house like she owned it, going through my things—”
“This is her house.”
The words hung in the air like a blade.
The blonde woman blinked. “Excuse me?”
“This house.” David’s voice was level, controlled, but there was something beneath it now—something breaking. “It belonged to my father. When he died, he left it to her. My mother. Not you. Not me. Her.”
She laughed. It was a sharp, nervous sound. “David, that’s ridiculous. We’ve lived here for three years—”
“Because she let us.”
The laughter died.
David took a step closer. “She signed the deed over to me temporarily so we could handle the estate taxes. Do you remember that? The paperwork you never bothered to read?”
Her face paled.
“I was supposed to transfer it back to her once everything cleared. That was always the plan. But you liked living here, didn’t you? You liked the address. The garden parties. Telling your friends you lived in the old Harrington estate.”
“David—”
“So I kept putting it off. And you kept treating her like a guest. Then like a burden. And now—” His voice finally cracked. “Now like a servant.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
He turned away from her, staring at the fountain, the manicured hedges, the perfection of it all. “I watched you. Just now. I was upstairs in my office and I heard something, so I looked out the window. And I watched you spray my mother with a hose like she was an animal.”
“She wouldn’t leave—”
“She was getting a glass of water!” His shout echoed off the stone walls. Birds scattered from the fountain. “I saw her in the kitchen this morning. She couldn’t sleep. She was just getting water, and you—” He stopped himself, his fists clenched at his sides.
When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. Broken. “You smiled.”
She said nothing.
“You enjoyed it.”
Still nothing.
He turned back to her, and his eyes were wet. “What happened to you?”
She flinched like he’d struck her.
“When we met, you were kind. You were warm. You said you wanted a family. You said you’d love my mother like your own.” His voice cracked again. “What happened?”
For a moment, something flickered across her face. Something almost human. But then it was gone, replaced by the cold mask she wore so well.
“Your mother never accepted me,” she said quietly.
“That’s not true.”
“She compared me to your father’s first wife. Every day. Every meal. Every holiday. Nothing I did was ever good enough.”
“She was grieving—”
“For three years?” Her voice rose now, sharp and bitter. “She made me feel like an intruder in my own home, David. She looked at me like I’d stolen something from her. Like I’d taken you away.”
“So you decided to break her?”
The words hit like a slap.
She stared at him, her jaw tight, her hands trembling at her sides.
“You didn’t talk to me,” David said, his voice raw. “You didn’t tell me you were struggling. You just… turned into this.” He gestured at her, at the hose on the ground, at the water still pooled on the stone. “Into someone I don’t recognize.”
“I tried to talk to you,” she said, her voice suddenly desperate. “You were always working. Always traveling. I was alone in this house with a woman who hated me—”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
