Chapter 5 - The Secret in the Pantry
By the following Tuesday, a strange, uneasy truce had settled over the Mercer mansion.
The guards remained at the perimeter, but they had been ordered by Prescott to keep their weapons concealed inside their coats whenever they were within sight of the third-floor windows. The medical team—Dr. Franklin Yates and his two private nurses—had been relocated to a small lounge down the hall, entering Room 104 only twice a day to draw necessary blood samples and administer pain medications.
The children were changing.
It was not a medical miracle—their bloodwork still showed the brutal, unrelenting markers of advanced acute lymphoblastic leukemia—but their lives had returned.
Jonah was eating small bowls of oatmeal cooked with cinnamon and brown sugar. Blythe had finished her first watercolor painting using her mother’s wooden box—a loose, vibrant sweep of yellow and green that now hung on the dark oak paneling beside her bed, held in place by two strips of medical tape.
At seven o'clock in the evening, after the children had fallen into a deep, restful sleep under their light cotton blankets, Waverly stepped out of Room 104 and walked down the grand staircase toward the ground floor.
The mansion was dark. The wall sconces had been dimmed to a soft amber glow, throwing long, dramatic shadows across the portraits of past Mercer ancestors lining the walls.
Waverly walked into the main kitchen—a massive, industrial space of stainless steel, copper pots, and black granite counters.
Odette Marsh was standing at the butcher block table, wrapping a loaf of fresh sourdough bread in linen paper.
“They’re asleep,” Waverly said, leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed over her grey cardigan.
Odette looked up. Her sharp grey eyes scanned Waverly’s tired face, noticing the faint dark circles beneath her eyes that hadn't been there a week ago.
“You haven't slept more than four hours a night since you arrived,” Odette said, her tone crisp, but devoid of its former coldness.
“I sleep when they sleep,” Waverly said. She walked over to the tea kettle sitting on the stove. “Is there any peppermint left?”
“Top drawer, left side,” Odette said. She set the bread down and picked up a small silver tray holding a teapot and two stoneware mugs. “He’s in the library. He hasn't eaten since yesterday morning.”
Waverly paused, her hand on the drawer handle. “He has people to bring him food, Odette.”
“He doesn't eat when Prescott brings it,” Odette said flatly. “He just leaves it on the desk until the butter goes hard.” She looked at Waverly with a look that was remarkably close to respect. “He listens to you. I don't know what dark spell you cast on him, girl, but in twelve years of working for this family, I have never seen Lawson Mercer let a domestic worker speak to him the way you do.”
“I’m not a domestic worker,” Waverly said quietly, pulling a paper tea bag from the drawer. “And I’m not spellcasting. I just don't care about his money.”
“That’s why he listens,” Odette said. She pushed the silver tray toward Waverly. “Take it to him. If he starves, Prescott will start making decisions, and Prescott only knows how to buy bullets.”
Waverly looked at the silver tray, then let out a short, quiet sigh. She picked up the tray and walked out of the kitchen, her sneakers making no sound on the long rug leading to the east wing.
The library door was ajar, a warm sliver of yellow light spilling out onto the dark floorboards of the corridor.
Waverly pushed the door open with her elbow.
The library was two stories tall, lined with thousands of leather-bound books, featuring a massive stone fireplace where a low wood fire crackled quietly.
Lawson was sitting in a deep leather armchair near the hearth. He wore a clean white shirt, his sleeves rolled up, his dark hair damp from a recent shower. He was holding an old, leather-bound photo album in his lap, his long fingers tracing the edge of a black-and-white photograph.
He looked up as she entered.
He didn't look angry. He just looked tired—a young man who had grown old thirty years too soon.
“I brought tea,” Waverly said, setting the silver tray on the small mahogany table beside his chair.
“I didn't ask for tea,” Lawson murmured, though his voice lacked any edge.
“Odette said you were being difficult,” Waverly replied, pouring a cup of dark peppermint tea and handing it to him.
Lawson took the stoneware mug, his fingers brushing against hers for a fraction of a second. His skin was warm. He set the mug on his knee and looked down at the photo album in his lap.
Waverly looked at the page.
It was a picture of a young woman with dark curls, laughing on a sailboat, her arms stretched wide toward the water. She had Blythe’s small nose and Jonah’s wide, expressive eyes.
“Genevieve,” Lawson said softly.
“She was beautiful,” Waverly said.
“She was soft,” Lawson corrected her, his dark eyes fixed on the photograph. “Too soft for this house. Too soft for me. I thought if I built higher walls, if I put more men at the gate, if I bought more property, I could keep the world from touching her.”
He let out a dry, bitter laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over stone.
“A eighteen-year-old kid with a stolen revolver took her life in a parking lot on 4th Street because he wanted her purse,” Lawson whispered. “All my money. All my men. All my power. And I couldn't stop a five-dollar bullet.”
Waverly stood beside his chair, looking into the low fire.
“You can’t build a wall high enough to keep death out, Lawson,” Waverly said softly. “My son died in a public hospital room with six other children crying around him. I didn't have money for private doctors. I didn't have guards at the gate. I spent six months hating every rich person in Chicago because I thought if I had money, I could have saved him.”
She looked down at Lawson.
“Then I came here,” she continued, her voice steady and clear. “And I saw you sitting in this castle, dying inside the exact same darkness. Money doesn't protect you from the grief. It just gives you a bigger room to drown in.”
Lawson looked up from the photo album. He looked at Waverly—really looked at her—seeing the strength that didn't come from armor, the authority that didn't rely on weapons, and the quiet, terrible grace of a woman who had walked through hell and come out clean on the other side.
He reached out his hand—slowly, deliberately—and laid his palm over hers where it rested on the arm of his chair.
May you like
Waverly did not pull her hand away.
In the quiet library, with the fire crackling on the hearth and the winter wind howling against the tall leaded glass windows, the mob boss and the broken caregiver sat together in the dark, holding onto the only thing in the house that was still warm.
