Her account began after Maisie was already on the grass. Celia had been supervising the dining tables and heard Blythe tell Ellis to put the towel back. She saw Dessa move between the hose and the child, then saw Blythe redirect the water toward the housekeeper. The faucet had been turned off by the time Celia reached the edge of the lawn.
Ellis stood beside the catering trolley, pulling at a loose thread on his cuff. Callum recognized him as the young man near the bench but could not remember having noticed the towel in his hands. He had entered the kitchen too late to see that part. Celia shifted the clipboard against her hip and waited without answering for him.
“I picked it up because she looked cold,” Ellis said. “Then Mrs. Rourke told me her parents were dealing with it, and I put it down. Dessa got to her while I was still standing there. I brought it over afterward, but that was after she’d already been sprayed.”
He spoke evenly until the last sentence, then looked toward Celia. She gave him time to finish and asked if there was anything he wanted to correct. Ellis shook his head. Callum could see how much easier it would have been for him to describe only the moment he finally carried the towel across.
“You may be asked why you stopped,” Callum told him. “Give them your own answer. I won’t ask Celia to change your work because you’ve told me something painful, and I won’t ask you to leave anything out.”
Celia’s face remained reserved. She explained that her employees would speak individually and that she would not prepare an account for them to repeat. A large part of her business depended on private events, and yesterday’s party had already left her with unpaid hours and worried staff. Callum offered to settle the outstanding invoice through her usual office, keeping it apart from the conversation.
After they left, he sat at the kitchen table where Maisie’s wet dress had been laid the day before. He sent the old email exchange to the officer who had taken his account, along with the witnesses’ contact information. He also called Nadine Shaw, a lawyer who had advised him on his own business, and asked for an appointment concerning his daughter’s safety and his marriage. Only then did he call Gideon into the kitchen.
Gideon arrived carrying a folder, as though the meeting could be contained by bringing the right paperwork. Callum asked him to leave it closed. Through the window, a worker was removing the last of the flower arrangements, loosening stems from foam before placing them in a crate. Gideon glanced at the movement and took the chair opposite.
“I sent you a practical summary,” he said. “Dessa was distressed, Blythe felt undermined, and you wanted the household to function. If every disagreement came to you in its original form, you would spend your days mediating between people who ought to be able to work together.”
Callum asked why concern about a frightened child had become advice to support firmer discipline. Gideon began explaining the demands on a new stepmother, then stopped when Ronan entered from the hall. His father stood beside the counter, listening. Callum wished they had finished the conversation before Ronan arrived, but he kept the phone on the table with the exchange open.
“That summary went out under your name,” Callum said. “From now on, concerns about Maisie come directly to me. Don’t speak to the staff about what they should tell the officers, and don’t answer on their behalf.”
Ronan told Gideon to leave and said he would have someone speak to the employees himself. Callum stood before his father could make the call. The speed of the offer unsettled him almost as much as Gideon’s explanation. He pictured Ellis trying to describe his hesitation to one of Ronan’s men.
“Let them be contacted by the people handling this,” Callum said. “Your employees won’t hear a casual question when somebody arrives speaking for you. We’ve already had one man deciding how their words should reach us.”
Ronan looked at him for a long moment, then put his phone back in his pocket. Gideon gathered the unopened folder and left through the hall. Callum returned upstairs to find Maisie asleep with a picture book open beside her and Dessa sitting near the window. He took her place so she could eat lunch, holding the book carefully until his daughter woke.
Lenna arrived before evening. She set an overnight bag by the stairs and hugged her brother with one hand against the back of his neck. After checking on Maisie, she joined him in the sitting room, where he told her about Gideon’s summary and Wade being directed away from the lawn. She listened without the surprise he had expected.
“I stopped bringing things to Gideon years ago,” she said. “Anything difficult came back as a misunderstanding he’d already settled. Dad liked being told the house was running smoothly, and eventually I got tired of explaining why I wanted to leave.”
Callum remembered Gideon describing Lenna as restless, impatient with family obligations. He had repeated some of that to her during an argument about a holiday she refused to attend. Now he asked her to sit down and tell him what she had tried to say then. Lenna moved her bag away from the stairs before returning, making room for a conversation he had once helped end.
