Ruling with a New Frame novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: What a Father Owes

Joanna did not drink.

She stood on the carpet in her pearls with her hands held out in front of her.

"It is calming drops," she said. "From the health store. It is a harmless herbal tincture."

"Then it will not hurt you," said my father.

"I will not be treated like a criminal in my own house!"

"Doctor." My father did not look away from her. "Did you prescribe this?"

The doctor shifted in his chair.

His eyes slid to Marguerite, and she gave him nothing at all.

"Joanna came to me," he said at last, thickly.

"She said the child was overwrought. I wrote a mild sedative."

"It is given in the morning," I said. "So I am slow at breakfast and slow at lessons."

"And slow at the door when the car comes."

"Six months of it," said my father.

His voice was very quiet.

"Doctor, get out of my house."

"Edmund, you can't..." the doctor began.

"I can. Get out. And leave that pad."

The doctor left the pad on the sofa.

He took his bag, and he went out into the hall with the heavy tread of a man who had just lost his income.

Marguerite had not moved.

She stood with her back to the fire, small and black and hard.

"You are making a mistake," she said to my father. "You are listening to a child over your mother."

"I am listening to a child over a woman who hands out trays," said my father.

"Her husband sits drugged in a locked room."

My grandmother did not blink.

"You will regret this, Edmund."

"I regretted it two years ago," he said. "I just didn't have the spine to say so."

Joanna burst into tears.

It was not a real sob.

It climbed the stairs ahead of her with the clack of her heels, and a door slammed at the top.

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