When the Colonel Came to the Estate

Charles Pembroke looked older than he had a moment before.

Not tired. Not embarrassed.

Haunted.

Wesley stared at his father with a face I had never seen on him before. He looked like a man standing at the edge of a familiar room and realizing the floor beneath the rug was missing.

“What does that mean?” Wesley asked.

Charles did not answer.

Margaret gripped the arm of the chair beside her. Her pearls rested perfectly at her throat, her pale blue dress remained immaculate, but her expression had changed completely. The woman who had commanded the room only minutes earlier now looked as if someone had knocked on a locked door inside her memory.

“Charles,” she whispered again. “Tell me this is not about Eleanor.”

My father’s eyes sharpened.

Dana Mercer’s pen stopped moving.

Captain Ortiz looked from one face to another, absorbing every reaction without interrupting.

Wesley turned toward his mother.