Chapter 89 Stephanie

Chapter 89 Stephanie


Violet's Pov

I stood at the edge of the building, holding the lamp in my hand, and I did not move.

The window was six feet from where I stood. The light inside was warm and steady. Two voices were coming through the glass. Eric's voice was a voice I had grown up with and spent years learning to navigate around.

Stephanie.

Alive.

I pressed my back flat against the stone wall and I breathed.

I thought about the day she died. The day her body had been found and the accusation had turned immediately on my parents and me, had sold me to Eric within the week. I thought about how fast it had all moved. How clean the sequence had been. How one thing had followed the next with a speed I had been too devastated at the time to question.

"You are taking too long," Stephanie said. Her voice was clear through the glass. Impatient. The specific impatience I remembered from years of being in the same spaces as her. She had always been impatient with things that were not moving at her pace.

"I am not taking long," Eric said. "I am being careful. There is a difference."

"You always say that," she said. "Being careful and stalling are starting to look identical from where I am sitting."

"They are not identical," he said. "Stalling means no progress. Being careful means progress at the right rate."

"She is eleven days past her due date," Stephanie said. "Every day she does not deliver is another day I am sitting in a building that smells of horses. I am not enjoying this."

"You agreed to the terms," Eric said. "When we set this up you agreed to the outer building."

"I agreed when I thought this would take two weeks," she said. "It has been six. Six weeks, Eric."

"Plans adjust," he said. "She has been more resilient than expected."

"She is a pregnant woman in a comfortable house," Stephanie said. "She is not resilient. She is simply not broken yet."

"She is observant," Eric said. "That is different from resilient and more difficult to manage."

"She noticed nothing," Stephanie said. "She is still here."

"She is still here because I have managed it correctly," Eric said. "Not because she has not been watching."

A pause. Movement inside. A chair is shifting.

"How much longer," Stephanie said.

"After delivery," Eric said. "We have been over this. Not before. The recovery period is necessary. The child needs to be stable enough to survive without her before we move."

The sentence landed on me as something dropped from a height.

Stable enough to survive without her.

I pressed my hand against Eli. He pushed back. Steady.

"Define stable enough," Stephanie said.

"Helen will tell me," Eric said. "After the birth. Within the first week, she will give me a read on the child's health baseline. When the child is confirmed stable, we move."

"A week after delivery," Stephanie said. "Potentially two weeks from now if she delivers tomorrow."

"Possibly," Eric said. "It depends on the child."

"And if the child is not stable," Stephanie said.

"Then we wait until he is," Eric said. "The child is the asset. We do not compromise the asset."

"And she is not the asset," Stephanie said.

"She was the asset for six months," Eric said. "Every battle we won came from her predictions. The Harmon withdrawal. The Kelloway surrender. All of it."

"And now," Stephanie said.

"Now the value calculation shifts," Eric said. "Once the child is born, if the gift is hereditary through him, the child replaces her utility. She becomes the liability."

"She has always been the liability," Stephanie said. "I have been saying so since before any of this started."

"You have also been wrong about several things," Eric said. "I did not move on your original timeline and we won six months of territorial gains because I did not. I am not apologising for that."

"I am not asking you to apologise," she said. "I am asking you to commit to a timeline now."

"After delivery," he said. "As soon as Helen clears the child as viable and stable. We do not wait for her full recovery. We move at the earliest point at which the child can survive independently."

"Agreed," Stephanie said.

I stood against the wall and kept my breathing even.

"And Jacob," Stephanie said.

"Jacob is outside my perimeter," Eric said.

"Jacob was inside your perimeter last week," she said. "He spoke to her in her room."

A pause. Longer than the previous ones.

"He was inside," Eric said. His voice was quieter.

"He found a gap," she said. "Whatever he told her, she has been different since."

"Different how," Eric said.

"More internal," Stephanie said. "More careful. She is watching you differently. I see it from the window when she is in the garden. The quality of how she looks at the house has changed."

"When did this happen," Eric said.

"Last Tuesday," she said. "You were at the eastern consultation. He used the eastern oak. The branch that extends over the fence. He was inside for forty minutes."

"And no alarm was raised," he said.

"No," she said. "The post rotation was at the far swing. He had enough time."

Another pause.

"Why did you not tell me immediately," Eric said. His voice was very controlled.

"Because I wanted to see what she did afterward," Stephanie said. "Whether she tried to act on whatever he told her."

"And has she," he said.

"Not yet," Stephanie said. "But she will. Whatever he said, it was enough to change something. She is building toward a decision."

"She is nine months pregnant and eleven days past her due date," Eric said. "She cannot build toward much."

"You underestimate her," Stephanie said. "She is not passive. She is managing what she shows you. Those are different things."

Eric was quiet for a long moment.

"I will close the oak gap tonight," he said.

"And do what about what he told her," Stephanie said.

"I will show her something that counters it," he said. "She responds to evidence. I give her evidence."

"What evidence," Stephanie said.

"A letter," he said. "In his handwriting. Whatever he told her in that room, I give her a written account in his hand that says the opposite."

"You have enough of his handwriting to do that quickly," she said.

"Yes," he said. "I have been practicing it for six months. I can produce something convincing overnight."

"Then do it," she said.

More movement inside. They were separating. Moving toward the far door.

"Eric," Stephanie said.

"Yes," he said.

"When this is done," she said. "When Eli is stable and she is gone. We take the child and the territory and the pack and move forward the way we planned from the beginning."

"Yes," he said.

"You have not changed your mind about that," she said. "Being around her for six months has not changed your mind."

A pause.

"No," he said. "The plan holds."

"Good," she said. "Because I have been in a building that smells of horses for six weeks and I would like something to have been worth it."

"It will be worth it," he said. "Go back to your building."

"I hate that building," she said.

"I know," he said. "Go back anyway."

I heard the internal door open and close. Then quiet.

I waited two full minutes against the wall. Then I walked back to the house.

I kept my face arranged in  way I needed it to be. I went through the garden door and past the kitchen and up the main stairs.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

Eli pushed against my right side. Hard. Then harder.

"I know," I said to him. "I know."

I pressed both hands flat against him, breathed, and thought about what I had heard and what it meant and what came next.

They were going to let him be born. They were going to wait for Helen to say he was stable. Then they were going to remove me.

Eric was going to sit in that corner chair with his warm expression and his careful words and wait for Helen to give him the timeline.

I had that timeline too now.

Whatever happened between now and when Helen made that assessment, I had to be somewhere else.