Chapter 11 — No More Secret Door
Roderick looked toward the enormous wardrobe.
“No.”
Eudora looked disappointed.
“Why?”
“Because if Mara comes here again, she uses the front door.”
Celestine heard.
Her face changed slightly.
Roderick continued.
“Nobody in this family needs to sneak through a wall to belong here.”
Eudora smiled.
“Okay.”
The hidden passage was not destroyed.
It was part of the mansion’s history.
But Roderick had the entrance made safe.
A proper lock was installed.
Eudora could not accidentally wander inside.
Electrical wiring was inspected.
The archive room was cleaned professionally.
Every document was cataloged.
Nothing else was secretly removed.
Roderick insisted on that.
He wanted the record as complete as possible.
Among the papers they found letters from Isabeau to the Harcourts.
She had asked for updates about Mirelle.
Some had been answered.
Photographs had been sent back.
Alaric stored them in the hidden room.
He apparently could not bring himself to destroy them.
But he also never showed them to Roderick.
One letter from Isabeau was especially painful.
Roderick still speaks about Mirelle as though she is watching him from heaven.
I cannot forgive us for allowing this.
Roderick stared at the sentence.
His mother had known the lie was hurting him.
But she never corrected it.
Mara read the letter later.
She cried too.
“Do you hate them?” she asked.
Roderick thought.
“Sometimes.”
“And sometimes I miss them.”
Mara nodded.
“Both can happen.”
Roderick looked toward her.
That became something they understood about each other.
Families were rarely simple enough for one emotion.
Over the next few months, Roderick and Mara continued meeting.
Eventually Eudora met her.
This time, Mara came through the front door.
Eudora stood behind Roderick at first.
Mara smiled.
“Hello, Eudora.”
Eudora looked toward her necklace.
“Daddy gave you bunny?”
Mara laughed.
“Apparently.”
Eudora smiled.
That was the beginning.
Not instant closeness.
Not pretending decades had not been stolen from Roderick and Mara.
Just ordinary contact.
Lunch.
Photographs.
Stories.
Questions.
Sometimes awkward silence.
And slowly, something resembling siblinghood.
But Roderick’s relationship with Celestine remained damaged.
Not because she discovered Mara.
Because she decided she had the right to control how and when Roderick learned the truth.
Then she made Eudora help preserve that control.
Roderick needed to know whether Celestine truly understood that distinction.
So one evening he asked her a question.
“If you could go back to the day you opened Mara’s letter, what would you do?”
Celestine’s answer determined whether they could actually repair what happened.