The Arrangement novel · Chapter 6 of 24
Chapter 6: The Photograph
Neither of us said a word about the study all day Saturday.
Caspar spent the morning in the garden with a sketchbook, and I spent it on the seawall with my laptop, pretending to read papers.
At lunch he passed me the salt and our fingers touched, and we both dropped it.
The housekeeper looked at the ceiling.
At seven o'clock the whole family went in to the real dinner, the one with the name.
The Autumn Dinner, the cards said, in the old man's handwriting, which Clive had copied onto the place settings with a fountain pen.
The trustee took the seat at the end again.
This time she had a thin folder in front of her.
Cressida waited until the soup was cleared.
She wore a green silk dress and her hair was down, and she had a smile ready that she had clearly practiced in a mirror.
"Since we're all gathered," she said, "I think the trustee ought to see something."
She slid her phone to the middle of the table.
On it was the picture of me in my sleep shirt, sitting astride Caspar in the old man's chair, with my hands in his hair and his face against my neck.
The room made a noise.
It wasn't a gasp.
It was fourteen people deciding where to look.
My face burned from my collar to my hairline.
Caspar's whole body turned to stone.
"This was three in the morning," Cressida said gently. "In Grandfather's study. In the one room Grandfather never allowed anyone to touch his things."
"Cressie," Clive said, in the tone of a man who had written every word of the script.
"Don't you think it's a little convenient? A couple who has to prove a relationship, caught at the exact hour I came downstairs, in the exact room I'd see? It looks staged to me."
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