Chapter 5 — Little Star

“For as long as it took,” I repeated.

Sebastian didn’t move.

“Did you think there would be a day when I stopped needing to know what happened?”

“I thought there would be a day when Vale could no longer reach you.”

“And until then I was supposed to live my whole life without asking?”

“No.”

“But that’s what you arranged.”

Marta stood.

“Olivia should sit down.”

“I am sitting down.”

I took the chair opposite Sebastian’s desk, mostly because my legs had started shaking.

Marta’s mouth closed.

Sebastian poured water into a glass and placed it within reach. He didn’t tell me to drink.

I appreciated that more than I wanted to.

“How did Vale find me now?”

“Your employer began handling payments for one of his companies. Your name appeared in records his people examined.”

“By chance?”

“The job was yours before that connection existed. We’re still tracing who brought the company into the arrangement.”

“Does he know about the key?”

Sebastian’s eyes moved to my backpack.

“Do you still have it?”

I pulled the bag closer.

“That wasn’t my question.”

“He’s been looking for something your mother took. I believe the key is part of it.”

“What does it open?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

He leaned back.

“I understand why you’re asking.”

“Then answer.”

“Yes.”

I watched him long enough to make the silence uncomfortable.

He let it stay that way.

“Who else knows I’m here?”

“My security staff. A few people who needed to help find you. Vale knows now.”

“And my mother worked in this house.”

“Yes.”

I looked toward Marta.

“How long did you work with her?”

“Long enough to miss her.”

Her voice scraped on the last word.

I wanted to ask more, but my phone vibrated.

Ethan.

Nine missed calls. Three messages.

Please don’t believe everything they tell you.

I can explain.

We need to meet.

I showed Sebastian.

“Can you find out whether he’s still in the city?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not asking you to hurt him.”

“I understood.”

“I’m saying it anyway.”

He nodded.

I blocked Ethan’s number before I changed my mind.

It wasn’t forgiveness or closure. It was one decision I could make without consulting anyone in this house.

“I want copies of everything about my employer and the building,” I said. “Not selected pages.”

“You’ll have them.”

“And I want someone I can speak to who doesn’t work for you.”

“A lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“I can have names sent to you. You choose whom to call.”

I looked at the portrait over the fireplace.

“What did you become after your father?”

Sebastian followed my gaze.

“Someone who spent too long believing he could repair things without explaining what he’d broken.”

“That sounds carefully practiced.”

“It is.”

For the first time, I saw fatigue beneath the control.

It didn’t absolve him.

It made him harder to dismiss.

Marta came to the desk.

“Sebastian, enough for now.”

There was no pleading in it.

He looked at her.

Then he closed the drawer.

A man whose guards stopped moving when he lifted a hand had just accepted an instruction from his housekeeper.

I noticed that.

I also noticed the way Marta pulled her sleeve down before reaching for my glass.

By afternoon, I had copies of the correspondence, the building purchase documents, and three names of attorneys.

I called one from the guest room with the door closed.

She didn’t promise miracles. She told me what to preserve, what not to sign, and what questions to ask my former employer.

Practical instructions helped.

I wrote them on the back of the vacancy notice.

Then I called the office.

My supervisor didn’t answer.

Human Resources told me someone would return my call.

No one did.

I showered and changed into the spare shirt from my bag. When I came downstairs, Marta had left soup warming on the stove.

She asked whether I wanted company.

I said no.

She left without making me feel cruel for it.

Later, Sebastian stopped at the kitchen doorway.

“I’m having the guest room prepared for as long as you need it.”

“One night at a time.”

“One night at a time,” he agreed.

I stirred the soup.

“Did my mother sit here?”

“Yes.”

“Which chair?”

He pointed to the one across from me.

I stared at it until he quietly left.

Sleep wouldn’t come.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Ethan smiling outside the bank.

Then my mother in the photograph.

Then Sebastian at nineteen, with enough money to arrange an escape and not enough judgment to make it safe.

Near midnight, I heard footsteps in the hallway and opened my door.

Marta stood outside.

“I was checking whether you needed anything.”

“A different day.”

Her expression changed.

“Yes,” she said. “I would have liked to give you that.”

I glanced behind her.

The corridor was quiet.

“Does everyone here stay up all night?”

“Some nights.”

“Where can I go without setting off an alarm?”

“The kitchen. The library. The conservatory, if you want some air.”

She showed me the rear stairs.

I took my backpack because I had spent too many years learning not to leave it behind in an unfamiliar house.

The conservatory smelled of damp earth and white roses.

Rain ticked against the glass overhead. Lamps cast soft circles over the benches.

Marta sat near a stone planter.

She looked up when I entered, then moved aside.

I set the backpack beneath the bench and sat at the other end.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

“Was she happy here?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“She missed you when she worked late.”

I looked at her.

“Did she talk about me?”

“Constantly.”

“What did she say?”

Marta folded her hands.

“That you asked questions from the moment you woke up. That you wanted to know why the moon followed the car. That you hated peas unless she called them something else.”

“What did she call them?”

“Tiny cabbages.”

I laughed before I could stop myself.

Then the laugh hurt.

I remembered that.

A fork suspended over a yellow plate. My mother negotiating with an eight-year-old as though dinner were a treaty.

“I thought I’d made that up.”

“No.”

Marta kept her eyes on the roses.

“What was she like when she wasn’t with me?”

“Stubborn. Impatient when people lied badly. Always certain she could manage one more thing before going home.”

“Sebastian said she was brave.”

“She was frightened every day.”

“Of Vale?”

“Of what would happen to you.”

I rubbed my thumb over a loose thread on my sleeve.

“After she died, people kept saying she loved me. They said it whenever they didn’t want to answer something.”

Marta turned toward me.

“They were telling you the truth.”

“I know. I just don’t remember enough.”

Her face tightened.

I looked down at my hands.

“Sometimes I can hear her voice, but only a word or two. Then I try too hard, and it goes.”

Marta breathed in slowly.

“What do you remember?”

“A blanket. Cinnamon. She used to call me something.”

The rain grew louder overhead.

I waited.

Marta’s fingers pressed into each other.

“Little star,” she whispered.

I stood so abruptly that the bench scraped against the floor.

She looked up at me.

No one had used those words since I was eight.

Not my aunt.

Not anyone who had read my school files or paid for my care.

“How do you know that?”