Chapter 6
Audrey's POV
I didn't know how long I'd been asleep.
When I woke, the room had changed. Quieter. The lights were off, only the light from outside warm and soft, not harsh.
I turned my head.
Gabriel was sitting in the chair by the window.
He still had his work clothes on — jacket, dress shirt, tie loosened a few inches. He was just sitting there, back perfectly straight, gaze resting on the window or somewhere that didn't exist.
I watched him for a while without speaking.
He's here now.
I didn't ask why. I wasn't sure my voice would work, and I wasn't sure I wanted the answer — wasn't sure what I'd do with it if it turned out to be some procedural reason, some box on a checklist that needed ticking. I just looked at him, and felt something that had been pulled wire-tight in my chest quietly loosen a little.
He noticed I was awake. Turned to face me.
"How long was I out?" My voice came out rougher than I expected.
"Most of the morning." He assessed me briefly — quick, like checking a status report. "How do you feel?"
"Heavy." I shifted slightly. "What happened?"
"You passed out."
"I know that part."
"You didn't eat anything last night." He was watching me.
"I just... wasn't hungry."
He didn't push. Didn't say of course or that's why this happened or any of the other accurate things that would have made me want to disappear. He just looked at me with an expression that was hard to categorize — not warm exactly, but not cold either. More like attention. The kind that costs something to maintain.
"Patricia will bring something up," he said, standing. "Finish it."
"Okay."
He moved toward the door. Stopped at the frame.
"This week," he said, not turning around, "I'm staying home."
He walked out, leaving the door open a crack — not closed.
Patricia set the tray on the nightstand without a word.
Oatmeal, toast, a small dish of honey.
"When did he come back?" I said.
Patricia paused with her hand still on the tray. "He came back this morning."
I sat up. "This morning?"
"He postponed the meetings."
Postponed.
"Because of me," I said. It wasn't a question.
Patricia looked at me the way people look at you when they've decided the kindest thing is the direct thing. "Mr. Blackwood makes his own decisions," she said. "Your only responsibility right now is to eat that food and get better."
She left without waiting for a response. The door stayed cracked.
I stared at the tray and picked up the spoon.
About half of it was all my stomach would take. I put the spoon down, lay back, and let sleep pull me under before I could think too hard about what postponed meant, and whether I was allowed to feel anything about it.
Late afternoon.
The chair by the window was empty when I woke up.
Of course it is. I'd known before I even opened my eyes. He had work.
Then I heard his voice.
Low. Too far away to make out words. Coming from somewhere below—the study, probably, the room near the front stairs. I couldn't catch anything useful. Just the cadence, that particular flat steadiness he had when he was working through something he didn't like.
I didn't go downstairs. I just shifted onto my side, facing the gap in the door, and let the sound stay there.
An hour later, Gabriel came up.
He looked at the tray, at the half-finished bowl, and something in his expression went careful. "That isn't enough."
"It's more than yesterday."
"Yesterday you ate nothing."
"Then technically I'm improving."
He didn't take the bait. Just turned and told Patricia, in a voice I could hear clearly through the open door, to bring another portion in an hour. Then he sat down in the chair—the same one, by the window—and watched me with that specific stillness I was starting to recognize. The kind that meant he was waiting for something.
"Why didn't you use the intercom last night?"
I hadn't expected that. "Patricia was probably asleep."
"You had my number."
"You were working."
"That doesn't stop the phone from ringing."
I didn't have an answer ready.
He was quiet for a moment. Long enough.
"Next time, call me."
"What counts as next time?"
"Anything that makes you consider picking up the phone."
"Even if it isn't an emergency?"
"I'll decide whether it is."
I'll decide. Even his concessions came out as commands. I filed that away in the part of me that kept running even when the rest of me just wanted to sleep.
But right then, in that specific moment, it made me feel better. So I let it.
That night I finished the second portion Patricia brought up. Enough that I wouldn't have to defend myself if he came back to check. Then I lay in the dark—not full dark, the hallway light still filtering in—and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about how much of this was just protocol. Gabriel had made his decisions.
It doesn't mean anything, I told myself. He'd do the same for anyone my mother left in his care.
I almost believed it.
Around ten, I got up.
Not because I was hungry or scared or needed anything specific. I just couldn't stay in that room one more minute. I opened the door and walked to the top of the stairs and stood there in the dark, looking down at the study light still burning.
Gabriel came out a few seconds later. He looked up and saw me.
"What do you need?"
"Nothing."
"Then why are you standing there?"
I thought about saying I don't know. It was true enough. But what came out was: "Are you leaving tonight?"
"No."
He went back into the study. I went back to my room. I turned off the overhead light but left the door open, and the hallway glow made a narrow stripe across the floor near my bed.
Morning.
When I opened my eyes, the room held a quiet, unthreatening kind of brightness.
Not last night's kind—not the kind you run on all night with every light burning just to get through.
There were sounds from downstairs. Nothing specific, just the low hum a house makes when someone is in it—footsteps, the murmur of Gabriel and Patricia talking somewhere below.
He was still here.
I lay there and listened for a moment without rushing to get up.
He said he wasn't leaving. He didn't leave. Just that one thing, and I'd slept more soundly than any night since I got here.
I got dressed and went downstairs.
The study door was open. Gabriel was at his desk with documents spread across it, a half-finished coffee at his elbow, already working. Patricia was in the kitchen. Something on the stove smelled like eggs and toast and ordinary morning warmth. This was what the house looked like when it was just running—not in response to anything, not in crisis.
I stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment. Patricia handed me a plate without being asked.
Gabriel came out of the study and looked at me with the tone of a man issuing a schedule update. "Someone's coming this morning. Family. You don't need to be involved."
You don't need to be involved.
I turned that over twice. If it were routine family business, he wouldn't have said anything at all. He'd mentioned it because it touched me somehow, and the fact that he'd handed me the information pre-packaged with an exclusion clause told me exactly how much.
I didn't ask. I just nodded and finished my eggs.
