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She’s leading him somewhere. He can feel it.
He knows why she invited him here this morning just as clearly as she knows why he showed up. He hears the intent behind every careful word: keep digging. Don’t stop.
“I imagine that takes effort,” he notes.
“Constant effort,” she replies. “But it’s worth it. People find comfort in the illusion of refinement. They see a pleasant smile, a respectable name, and stop asking questions. No one really wants the truth, Professor. They just want the version that looks nice on paper.”
The entire world wants what looks nice on paper.
A clean story, tidy motives, something that fits neatly into a headline. No one wants to look deeper, to see what festers beneath the shiny surface.
That was the problem with Henry’s death. Everyone wanted to call it a tragedy and move on. Neat. Contained.
Except it wasn’t. Theo knew there was more. Lila knew it too.
Sitting across from Evelyn now, he’s certain she knows as well.
Theo lightly taps his teaspoon against the table. “And you’re comfortable with that?”
Evelyn’s eyes meet his over the rim of her cup. “Comfort has nothing to do with it. It’s simply what works.”
There’s a chill in her honesty that makes something in his chest ache with recognition. He knows that kind of pragmatism. It sands down the edges of morality until only utility remains. It’s efficient. Orderly. Almost admirable in its cruelty.
It keeps her world intact, just as it once kept his.
He sets his cup down. It clinks against the saucer. “I suppose that’s one way to preserve a legacy.”
Evelyn’s smile returns. “It’s the only way.”
He lets the words hang, the silence stretching just enough to keep her talking if she’s inclined. It’s the same rhythm he once used in court—measured pauses, disarming attentiveness, the illusion of empathy. He hadn’t realized how natural it still felt until now.
It’s disturbingly easy.
Evelyn looks at him with warmth, pleased to have an audience that looks engaged, and Theo feels that old reflex stir—the subtle mirroring, the well-timed nod, the faint hum of agreement that convinces people you’re already on their side. He doesn’t even have to think about it. His body remembers the choreography of persuasion like muscle memory.
He hates it.
It’s the same instinct that once made him a brilliant attorney and a lousy human being. The way he could make someone trust him without meaning to. The way silence could do half the work if he just held their gaze long enough. There was a time he could bend a truth until it fit whatever shape he needed.
And the ease of it, that’s what always frightened him most.
It’s who he was before Bellwood. Before Lila.
He glances at the faint steam curling from his cup. Before her. Before someone made him want to be something better.
The guilt slides in uninvited. Because even now, sitting here as the picture of civility, he’s lying again. Polite lies, but lies all the same.
He wonders how long before Lila notices. Before she realizes some parts of him never changed—the ones that know how to reshape truth, to withhold it just enough to protect someone, to make dishonesty sound merciful.
Theo lifts his cup, inhales the faint floral note. He takes another sip of tea to drown the thought. “This is good,” he says, meaning it.
She looks at him for a beat. “One of Victoria’s blends. She swore no store-bought tea could match her own.” Evelyn pauses, eyes softening. “I’m inclined to agree. I’ll be sad when it runs out.”
She stirs once, then lets the spoon rest. The silence that follows stretches.
“She was brilliant, you know,” Evelyn says finally, gaze fixed on the amber swirl in her cup. “Victoria. But she had a tendency toward excess. Obsession, really. She’d sit right there”—she gestures to the opposite chair—“for hours on end, reading old letters and thumbing through antiquity ledgers.”
Her words carry no venom, but no warmth either. Just a weary acceptance.
