The Quiet Room
Two Hundred Guests

The Study

August 25, 2026 · Part 5 of 10 · 2 min

The Hale townhouse study smelled like cedar and old paper, and Yolanda had cleaned it a hundred times before she'd ever been allowed to sit in one of its chairs. Tonight she sat in one anyway, because Anneliese Hale had pointed at it and said, "Sit," in a voice that did not invite discussion.

Corwin stood by the window, jacket off, tie loosened, a man doing damage control in his head. Roderick hovered near the door like a man guarding an exit he might need himself.

"Tell her what you told the Fairweathers," Anneliese said to her husband, not looking at him. "About the old nanny."

"Anneliese—"

"Tell her."

Corwin's mouth opened. Nothing charming came out of it this time.

Anneliese turned to Yolanda instead, and her voice, when she used it, was almost gentle, which was somehow worse than if she'd screamed. "How long?"

"Six years," Yolanda said. There didn't seem to be any use in the smaller lie anymore. "Since before he was born."

She watched something in Anneliese's face that wasn't shock. It was closer to recognition — the look of someone finally being handed the missing piece of a puzzle they'd been quietly assembling alone, in secret, for a long time.

"He doesn't have my blood type," Anneliese said, to no one in particular. "I found that out when he was two, from an old hospital form, and I told myself it was a clerical error, because that's what Corwin told me to tell myself." She reached into the small clutch she'd carried all night — she hadn't changed out of her gala dress, Yolanda realized, hadn't done anything since the ballroom except walk here and wait — and drew out a plain white envelope, sealed, slightly soft at the corners from years of being carried and put away again.

"I had a paternity test run two years ago," she said. "Discreetly. Beckett's, and mine. I paid for it in cash and I never opened it, because I was a coward, and because some part of me already knew what it would say."

She set it on the desk between the three of them.

"I think it's time we all found out together."

Corwin didn't move. Roderick did — one step toward the desk, hand already lifting.

Continue the story Part 6: What Beckett Saw →

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