He simply began to sob, not like a grown man facing a complicated disaster, but like a small child trapped inside a lie that had finally become too enormous to hold together.
“It was not supposed to happen this way,” he finally murmured, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.
“I honestly did not think she would scream like that,” he added, his voice hollow.
Grace felt her blood turn cold, her stomach twisting at the admission.
“What do you mean it was not on purpose?” she asked, her voice dangerously quiet.
Caleb covered his face with both hands, his shoulders shaking with the force of his collapse.
“I just wanted to see if I could make her feel fear,” he confessed, as though the cruelty of his own words shocked even him.
Katherine let out a sharp, broken sob at what he said, and Frank immediately stepped forward, offering to take her to the privacy of the guest quarters.
Robert helped her stand, his expression grim as he guided her out of the room.
She walked away without once looking back at her husband, her costly wedding dress dragging behind her across the floor like a torn shroud.
Grace remained standing directly before her son, her motherly love battling the absolute horror of what she had just heard.
“Caleb, look at me right in the eyes,” she commanded.
He refused to raise his head, his chin pressed tightly against his chest.
“Mom, please, just do not ask me anything else tonight,” he begged.
“I am asking you to speak right now,” she insisted, refusing to retreat.
Caleb swallowed hard, his throat moving convulsively as he finally looked up, his eyes bloodshot and filled with a confusing blend of raw anger and deep, self-loathing shame.
“She had to pay for it,” he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register.
Grace felt as if the floor underneath her were shifting, the world she believed she understood slipping out of her hands.
“Pay for what, Caleb? What on earth are you talking about?” she demanded.
Caleb shifted his gaze toward the door through which Katherine had been led away, then spoke with a chilling, clinical coldness Grace had never heard from him before.
