Page 128 of The Keeper

Oswald trembled. I’d struck a nerve, and I could see his composure unraveling in real time. “That is a family matter,” he snapped, spittle spraying from the force of his words. “How dare you come into my home⁠—”

“Try to deflect all you want, but⁠—”

“I want you out⁠—”

“Stop it!” Elizabeth’s sharp voice cut through our escalating argument. She rose to her feet, her eyes flinty as she pointed to the couch. “Sit. Down. Both of you.”

After a tense beat, Oswald and I both complied. I sank back into my seat, my flash of anger slowly draining away. I felt a prickle of shame as Carina curled her hand over mine and gave a brief but reassuring squeeze.

She’d kept a tactful silence this entire time, but I hated that she had to see me like this—quick-tempered and reactive. I’d kept a cooler head than in my previous meetings with the Andersons, but Oswald had been close to getting under my skin again.

However, there was no judgment in Carina’s eyes, only compassion. And once again, I wondered how I’d gotten lucky enough to find her.

Once everyone else was seated, Elizabeth retook her spot on the couch. She regarded me, her expression weary but resolute. “We’ll tell you what happened,” she said.

Her husband’s head whipped toward her. “Lizzie⁠—”

“No. Noah’s right. If we want to have a productive discussion, we need to tell him the truth.” She clasped her hands together in her lap, her knuckles white. “Sarah was our only child. I had difficulties conceiving for many years, and when she was born, she was our little miracle. We wanted only the best for her—the best education, the best connections and opportunities. However, our aspirations for her were admittedly quite…traditional, and Sarah, as you may have gathered from your time with her, was not so traditional. She was a headstrong child, and her stubbornness only grew over time. Soon, it became clear that she had very different notions than us of what her future should look like.”

“Her notions were impractical,” Oswald added, his mouth thinning. “She wanted to change the world one day and sail across the Pacific the next. She resented us for not supporting her dreams, but her dreams were bound to fail. We’d sheltered her her whole life, and she had no clue what was waiting for her in the real world. She could afford to be idealistic because of us. It was ridiculous—” He stopped when Elizabeth pierced him with a sharp look.

He sat back and closed his mouth while she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “By the time Sarah turned sixteen, we were arguing almost every day over everything you could think of, but our biggest fights were about her choice of college,” she said. “She applied to all the Ivy League schools to appease us, but her dream was to study philosophy at Cordon.”

Cordon was a tiny liberal arts college in Michigan. I’d met Sarah at a party there.

“Philosophy. At Cordon.” Oswald’s lip curled. “An absolutely useless degree at a mediocre college. What could she possibly do with that?”

I ignored his comment and kept my focus on Elizabeth.

“We didn’t know she’d applied to Cordon,” she said. “When the acceptance letters came in, Sarah had gotten into Stanford, Oxford, and every Ivy League, but her heart was set on Cordon.”

I had a sinking feeling I knew where this was going, but I kept my mouth shut and listened to the rest of the story.

“No matter how much we pleaded with her, she wouldn’t listen to reason, so we took matters into our own hands,” Oswald said. “I called Cordon’s dean of admissions and, in exchange for a hefty anonymous donation, had him rescind her acceptance.”

Carina let out a sharp exhale while I went rigid, my hand tightening around my knee.

“We thought we were doing the right thing,” Elizabeth said quietly. “She was so young and impressionable. We didn’t want her to do something she’d regret, but we didn’t think things through. The college told her they’d sent her acceptance by mistake, but Sarah didn’t believe them. How could she have been accepted everywhere else and rejected by Cordon? Eventually, she found out what we’d done. I don’t know how. Maybe someone at the dean’s office told her. Maybe she figured it out herself. But the day she confronted us was the day she left and never came back. Our last conversation with her before she died was an argument.” Elizabeth’s voice cracked. “She took a gap year abroad, and we lost track of her. She didn’t use any of our money. I never thought…she must’ve reapplied to Cordon…” She trailed off, her grief visible.

My mind spun. Christ. No wonder Sarah had cut them off. Her parents hadn’t just dismissed her dreams; they’d actively sabotaged them. It’d been the straw that broke the camel’s back, the culmination of a lifetime of differences and attempts to control her. In her eyes, it must’ve been the ultimate sin.

But I didn’t need to tell them that. They already knew. They’d lived with it for years.

“Did you try talking to her after she left?” I asked.

“Not initially,” Elizabeth admitted, regaining her composure. “We were stubborn too, and we refused to reach out to her first. We thought she’d come back once she found out how hard it was to survive without a safety net. She never did, and before we could make amends, she…” She broke off again, her eyes brightening. She blinked and turned away while Oswald whispered something to her.

For a moment, I saw two grieving parents instead of the people who’d spent months trying to take my daughter from me. What they’d done was wrong. There was no excusing it.

But as a parent, I understood the fear that’d driven their actions. The instinct to protect your child, the belief that you know what’s best. The problem was, the Andersons had let that instinct turn into control.

I wasn’t excusing them. But I understood.

Oswald placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. She took a shaky breath before continuing. “After Sarah passed, we were devastated. We never got over the way our relationship ended, and when we found out about Evie, it was like a miracle all over again. She’s the only piece of Sarah we have left—she looks so much like her—” Her voice caught, then steadied. “We saw it as our chance to make belated amends and to be better grandparents than we were parents. But when we found out you were the father, we were…concerned.”

“I deal with many public figures in my line of work,” Oswald said, his mouth tight. “Most of them are the same. Unstable, egotistical, reckless. They indulge in drugs and alcohol. Their personal lives are under constant scrutiny, and they rely on uninterested staff to look after their children. Then those children grow up to do drugs like their parents. It is inevitable, given the way they were raised.”

“This doesn’t apply to all celebrities, of course, but it’s a frequent enough occurrence to warrant concern,” Elizabeth said. “When we found out you were the father, we were wary. You seemed to be more responsible than the average celebrity, but there were red flags. The constant nights out at the pub. The revolving door of nannies. The…inadvisable romantic relationships.” Her eyes slid to Carina, who shifted uncomfortably.