twenty minutes of it.”
That was when Marjorie’s composure cracked.
She took one fast step toward me.
“You recorded me?”
“I documented what I found.”
“Without my consent?”
Elena calmly moved between us.
“I strongly recommend that everyone stop making legal declarations until jurisdiction and admissibility are properly assessed.
What matters at this moment is that Mr.
Monroe has contemporaneous recordings, photographs, and witnesses.”
The housekeeper was still standing several yards away.
Her name, I later learned, was Rosa Delgado.
Marjorie turned on her.
“Go inside.”
Rosa didn’t move.
“I said go inside.”
Rosa’s hands trembled at her sides, but she looked at Landon instead.
“Sir, I’m sorry.”
Landon frowned.
“For what?”
Rosa took a breath.
“Your mother told the staff that Mrs.
Keats was not allowed to sleep in the house while you were gone.”
“That’s enough,” Marjorie snapped.
Rosa flinched.
Then something changed in her expression.
Maybe she realized she had already crossed the line Marjorie had spent months teaching everyone not to cross.
She continued.
“When Mrs.
Keats became sick from the heat two weeks ago, I tried to move her into the downstairs guest room.
Your mother ordered me to put her things back outside.”
Callie closed her eyes.
I turned to her.
“You got sick?”
“Dad—”
“How sick?”
She hesitated.
“I fainted.”
For one terrible second, all I could see was the crib inside that shed.
The tiny crib.
The folded blanket.
The unopened box of diapers beneath it.
There had been something Callie hadn’t told me yet.
I looked from the crib to my daughter.
She knew what I was asking.
Her hand moved instinctively to her stomach.
Landon saw it too.
“Callie?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m pregnant.”
The entire lawn went silent.
Landon’s mouth opened, but no words came out.
Marjorie looked away.
That reaction told me more than any confession could have.
Landon noticed.
“You knew.”
Marjorie said nothing.
“Mom, you knew she was pregnant?”
“She told us recently.”
“How recently?”
Rosa answered.
“Seven weeks ago.”
Landon turned toward the shed again.
His expression changed from shock to something deeper.
Betrayal.
“You knew my pregnant wife was sleeping out there for seven weeks?”
Marjorie’s voice sharpened.
“Do not speak to me as though I harmed her.
She was given food.
She had access to the pool-house bathroom.
We provided a fan.”
I felt Callie recoil beside me.
A fan.
As though circulating 104-degree air around a metal-roofed shed was generosity.
Landon slowly folded the preservation notice in his hand.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked Callie.
That question could have sounded accusing.
Instead, it sounded broken.
Callie looked at him.
“I tried.”
Marjorie’s eyes narrowed.
Callie continued.
“Every time I called while you were overseas, your mother told me you were under pressure and that if I distracted you, I could cost you the partnership.
She said your father had made calls to help you get the assignment and that one complaint from me could ruin everything.”
Landon shook his head.
“That isn’t true.”
“I know that now.”
“Why didn’t you text me?”
“I did.”
He pulled out his phone.
Callie gave him several dates.
He searched.
Nothing.
Then Elena asked a simple question.
“Do you share a family phone plan?”
Landon looked up.
Marjorie went very still.
We
