Chapter 3

So he had known everything all along.

He simply hadn't wanted to put his beloved in a difficult spot, so my hurt counted for nothing.

Tears soaked the pillow while I let the grief and helplessness spread through my chest.

After that, I swallowed my resentment and learned to keep my mouth shut even tighter.

But trouble came faster than I ever imagined.

That day was Maggie's birthday party.

Every prominent family in New York had come to the old Henson estate, and everyone knew Maggie and Miles were nearly engaged, so within a few words they started offering congratulations.

I stayed in a corner, watching Miles fasten that one-of-a-kind necklace around Maggie's neck.

In that moment, I felt like a thief coveting something that belonged to someone else.

And that was also the day I was nailed to the pillory as a thief.

"Celine, did you take that necklace?"

When Miles stood in front of me demanding it, my mind went blank.

Everyone in the room turned to look at me, their eyes hungry for the show.

"I... I didn't!"

I lifted my head, trying to make Miles see the honesty in my eyes.

"The whole party, I never even went near her!"

I tried to defend myself, laying out my proof.

Miles knit his brows and glanced around, then lowered his voice. "Celine, it's fine even if you took it. It's only a necklace."

Before I could speak, he turned back to soothe Maggie. "All right."

"I'll buy you a better one."

Maggie pouted, cursed Miles a few times, and let it go.

But because of that one sentence from Miles, I was branded a thief for good.

I rushed to him like I'd lost my mind, clutching the hem of his clothes, crying, "I didn't, I didn't steal her necklace!"

The tears came before the words; I sobbed until I couldn't catch my breath.

"I already said it's fine even if you took it, so what are you crying for?"

"Your father beats you until you're covered in wounds and you don't cry, and one sentence from me and you can't stop?"

"Celine, don't put on an act."

There was no feeling in those words, only a warning underneath them.

My gripping hand released the hem of his clothes, as if cutting off the last thread of my attachment to him.

The party broke up earlier that day than any before.

The wild whispers around the old house only grew louder, everyone murmuring and sizing me up.

I hid in my room and cried for three days, for myself and for Miles too.

The night my whole body burned with fever, I felt like I'd fallen into a black hole.

In the haze, I thought I saw my dead mother.

"Mom, I miss you so much."

"I don't want to stay here anymore, I want to leave..."

Somewhere beyond my awareness, the door crashed open with a bang.

"Damn it!"

"She hasn't come out in three days and none of you noticed?"

Miles kicked open my door and rushed me, burning at a hundred and four, to the hospital.

In the drifting gaps of consciousness, I still wanted to clear my name.

"Mr. Henson, I really didn't steal Miss Fox's necklace."

"It doesn't matter."

"Celine, none of this matters."

There was worry in Miles's eyes, and a trace of weariness too.

In that moment I couldn't name what I felt. There was hurt, there was anger, but mostly it was my heart giving up.

Whether or not I was a thief didn't matter to Miles.

The reputation of a housekeeper's daughter meant nothing in his eyes.

"It doesn't matter to you, but it matters to me."

Miles said nothing, only hired a nurse to look after me at the hospital.

Later Miles said the necklace had been found, tucked in a lining pocket of Maggie's bag.

He said he'd make Maggie apologize to me. I answered him, "It doesn't matter."

And it truly didn't anymore.

I once thought Miles was the light that would save me.

But now I finally saw that he wasn't.

That farce and that illness severed the tie between me and Miles completely. I no longer followed him, and I almost never showed up anywhere he was.

I avoided him, and I avoided Maggie too.

The year of the admissions exams, I even secretly changed the college choices he'd set for me and applied to a university down south.

I wanted to be far, far away from him.

Apart from schoolwork, Miles and I barely spoke anymore.

Now and then he'd try to say a few caring words, and I'd hear the first line and find an excuse to walk away.

I thought everything would go smoothly.

Until the day before the SATs, when I got a call from the police department.

"Is this Celine? Your father's been in a car accident. He's not going to make it. Come to the county hospital right away."