Chapter Two: The Wrong Daughter
1364 Words
"I want her. Not the other one. Her."
Fayth heard it through the sitting room door.
She had been standing in the hallway with a tray of tea, about to knock. Two inches of open door was all it took.
Those six words stopped her cold.
"Mrs. Blackwood." Her father's voice. Low and tight, the way it got when he was afraid. "The arrangement, as we discussed, was with Vivienne."
"The arrangement has changed."
A pause.
"Vivienne is better suited. She's polished, she's—"
"I didn't ask for polished." Elena Blackwood's voice was calm. Final. The voice of a woman who did not negotiate once her mind was made up. "I want the girl who wasn't brought down to meet us. The one you've been keeping upstairs."
Silence.
Then Marissa, sharper: "Fayth is not what you're looking for. She's plain, she's quiet, she has no presence, no—"
"She is exactly what I'm looking for."
Another silence. Longer. Airless.
"Bring her in," Elena said.
Fayth stood in the hallway and stared at the tray in her hands.
The cups. The sugar cubes lined up neatly because Marissa checked.
She wanted to put the tray down and walk out of the front door and not come back.
Instead she breathed. Once. Twice.
She straightened her spine. Set the tray on the hall table. Smoothed the front of her gray dress.
And knocked.
* * *
The first thing she noticed was Vivienne.
Her stepsister stood near the fireplace with her arms crossed and her jaw set, staring at the wall above Fayth's head. She would not look at her. Could not look at her. Because looking at her would make it real, and Vivienne had built her entire identity on the certainty that she was the one who got chosen.
She was not being chosen today.
And it was destroying her.
Fayth felt something complicated move through her. Not satisfaction. Not pity. Something between the two. She knew what it felt like to be passed over. She had known it her whole life. She would not enjoy watching it happen to someone else, even Vivienne.
"Come in, child. Sit down."
Elena Blackwood smiled at her. A real smile. Not Marissa's controlled warmth or Vivienne's weaponized charm. Something genuine.
Fayth sat.
And then she made herself look at the man.
He was standing at the far end of the room with his arms at his sides, watching her cross the floor. His expression had not changed. Still closed. Still precise.
But when Elena said the words, everything shifted.
"We are here to propose a marriage arrangement between you and my grandson. You, Fayth. Not Vivienne. You."
The man's head turned.
He looked at his grandmother.
His jaw tightened. Just slightly. A muscle moved. He looked at Fayth next, then back at Elena, and for three full seconds something that was not quite controlled moved across his face.
Displeasure.
He had not known.
Whatever he had expected to walk through that door, it was not her.
He said nothing. But the glass of water in his hand shifted, and when he set it down on the side table the sound was slightly harder than necessary.
Fayth noticed all of it.
She was good at noticing things people assumed she missed.
"Three years," Elena continued, as if her grandson had not just communicated his objection in every possible way short of speech. "With full legal protections for both parties. Terms that are fair and clear."
Fayth's father said nothing. He was looking at his hands.
Marissa's face was glass.
And Vivienne made a sound at the fireplace. Small and involuntary and quickly swallowed. Like something had broken inside her before she could stop it.
Nobody looked at her.
That was the worst part. The room had simply moved on.
* * *
The Blackwoods left at half past five.
The door had not fully closed before Marissa's hand closed around Fayth's wrist.
Hard.
"Hallway."
She pulled her away from the sitting room, away from her father, into the narrow corridor by the kitchen. Then she let go and turned and looked at Fayth with everything stripped back.
No composure. No performance.
Just fury.
"You will call her tomorrow and decline. You will tell her Vivienne is the right choice and that there has been a misunderstanding. And then this family will proceed as normal."
Fayth looked at her wrist. At the red marks.
Then she looked up.
"No," she said.
Marissa blinked.
"What did you say?"
"I said no." Fayth kept her voice flat. Steady. "I'm accepting the arrangement."
Something crossed Marissa's face then. It was gone in an instant. But Fayth caught it.
Not just rage.
Fear.
"You don't know what you're doing," Marissa said quietly. "You don't know what you're stepping into."
"Then tell me."
Marissa stared at her.
For one moment she looked like she was going to say something real. Something that mattered. The words were right there, behind her eyes.
Then the moment closed.
"You're a fool," she said instead. And walked away.
Fayth stood alone in the corridor.
Her wrist still ached.
But she didn't move. She stood there and let the quiet settle, and she thought about the fear she had seen on Marissa's face.
Not anger at losing. Fear of something specific.
What does she know that I don't?
* * *
Her father came at midnight.
She heard the soft knock and sat up in the dark.
"Come in."
He stepped inside and closed the door and stood with his back against it. He looked old. She noticed that. Old and exhausted and like a man carrying a weight he had been carrying for a very long time.
He sat in the chair by her desk. Said nothing for a moment.
"Dad." Her voice was quiet. "Say whatever you came to say."
He exhaled. "Elena Blackwood is not just a wealthy woman making a business arrangement." He stopped. Started again. "There are things connected to you. To your past. Things I was told never to speak about."
Fayth went still.
"Connected to me how?"
"Your mother." Two words. He barely got them out. "It goes back to your mother. That's all I can say right now."
"That's not enough."
"I know." He looked at his hands. "Accept the arrangement, Fayth. Please. Whatever else happens, accept it. It's the safest place for you right now."
"Safest from what?"
He opened his mouth.
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen. The color left his face. Completely. Instantly. Like a light going out.
He stood up so fast the chair scraped.
"Dad." She grabbed his arm. "Who is that? Who is calling you?"
He looked at her hand on his arm. Then at her face. And for just a second she saw it.
Terror.
Real, bone-deep terror.
"Accept the arrangement," he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "Don't ask questions. Not yet. Please, Fayth."
He pulled free. Walked out. The door clicked shut.
She sat in the dark and listened to his footsteps fade down the hall.
Then a door somewhere closing.
Then nothing.
Her mother.
He had said her mother.
He never said her mother.
In twenty-two years, Richard Carrington had never once said her mother's name in front of Fayth. There were no photographs. No stories. No memories offered. It was as if the woman had never existed, as if Fayth had arrived in the world from nowhere, belonging to no one.
And now, in the middle of the night, with that terror on his face and a phone call that had turned him white, he had said her mother.
Fayth reached for her notebook.
She wrote one word.
Mother.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then she heard it.
A sound outside her window.
Three floors up.
She crossed to the glass and looked down into the dark front driveway.
A black car. Parked just beyond the gate. Engine off. No plates she could read.
It had not been there an hour ago.
As she watched, the car's headlights turned on. Once. Then off.
Like a signal.
To someone in the house.
- Writer
