Edmund Arrives
Edmund Sterling arrived twenty-one minutes later wearing a dark coat over pajamas and the expression of a man who had expected disaster long before receiving proof.
Behind him came the family solicitor, two uniformed officers, and Dr. Sayeed, Graham’s physician, who looked both angry and personally offended.
Celeste attempted dignity.
It had always served her well.
She stood near the fireplace in her red dress, arms folded just below the diamond bracelet, black eyes dry and shining.
“My daughter is unwell,” she said before anyone greeted her. “She has fabricated a paranoid scenario from household security equipment.”
Ava felt the old panic rise.
There it was.
The sentence prepared for her.
Unwell.
Paranoid.
Fabricated.
She gripped the mouse until her knuckles hurt.
Graham spoke before she could.
“No.”
The room stopped.
Celeste turned.
Graham did not look at her. He looked at Edmund, then at Dr. Sayeed, then at the officers.
“My daughter is telling the truth,” he said. “And I failed to see it soon enough.”
The words did not fix everything.
But they gave Ava back the floor under her feet.
Edmund crossed to the television and watched the surveillance angles in silence. He had spent decades hearing liars hide behind polish. His stillness was not shock. It was classification.
Dr. Sayeed watched the clip in which Celeste invoked his name regarding a false cognitive report.
His face darkened.
“I signed no such statement,” he said.
Celeste’s composure flickered.
The solicitor took notes by hand in a plain notebook without letting Celeste see the page.
No one turned the proof into spectacle. No one asked Ava to narrate every wound. That mattered more than she could explain.
Edmund approached the rabbit last.
He lifted it gently, as if touching something from a child’s grave, and turned it toward the light. The red point blinked once more.
His jaw tightened.
“This was Theo’s?” he asked.
Ava nodded.
Graham looked away.
That was the moment the betrayal reached its deepest room.
Celeste had not merely surveilled the living.
She had used the dead child’s toy as cover.
Edmund placed the rabbit on the mantel with terrible care.
May you like
Then he looked at Celeste.
“You will leave this house tonight.”
