Chapter 10 - CANADA, FOR REAL THIS TIME
Two years later, Chadworth actually had to go to Canada.
Toronto.
Three days.
Real meetings.
Real plane.
Gemma was ten.
Lorelai eight.
He stood in the foyer with a suitcase.
Both girls watched suspiciously.
Gemma asked:
“Are you really going?”
“Yes.”
“Plane leaves?”
“Yes.”
“Can we track it?”
Chadworth stared.
Lorelai grinned.
He handed Gemma his phone.
“Flight number.”
She checked.
“Legit.”
“This family has trust issues.”
Gemma raised an eyebrow.
“You started it.”
Fair.
---
Rosamund stood nearby.
Not as housekeeper.
Not as employee.
She had come for dinner.
She had graduated six months earlier with a degree in early childhood education and now directed a small preschool program in Brooklyn.
She and Chadworth had become friends slowly.
Painfully slowly.
Then something else.
Not hidden.
Not employer and employee.
Not built while she depended on his salary.
Only after both lives had changed.
Their first date had happened five months earlier.
Gemma found out because Chadworth was terrible at subtlety.
Lorelai found out because Gemma told her in thirty seconds.
No one was calling Rosamund “Mom.”
No one suggested replacing Elise.
Rosamund would not have allowed it.
Neither would Chadworth.
She was Rosamund.
That was enough.
---
Before leaving, Chadworth crouched in front of the girls.
“Three days.”
Gemma hugged him.
“Text when you land.”
“I will.”
Lorelai whispered:
“No fake trip?”
“No fake trip.”
“Promise?”
He looked at her.
“Promise.”
She hugged him.
Then whispered:
“We would know anyway.”
He smiled.
“How?”
“Cameras.”
Of course.
---
His flight landed in Toronto ninety minutes later.
The first thing Chadworth did after clearing customs was call home.
Gemma answered.
“Dad?”
“Landed.”
“Okay.”
“What are you doing?”
“Dinner.”
“What are you eating?”
“Pizza.”
He frowned.
“I left instructions for—”
Gemma groaned.
“You’ve been gone one hour.”
Fair.
Then Lorelai grabbed the phone.
“Rosie made cookies.”
Chadworth smiled.
“Save me one.”
“No.”
“Lorelai.”
“Maybe.”
He heard Rosamund laughing in the background.
The sound did something strange and peaceful inside him.
Two years earlier, he would have opened the security app.
Checked cameras.
Verified doors.
Watched.
Not now.
He closed his laptop.
Did not access a single feed.
That was the point.
Trust was not pretending cameras did not exist.
Trust was knowing when not to look.
---
Three days later, he returned.
The girls ran into his arms.
Real goodbye.
Real return.
No test.
No trap.
No hidden suspicion.
After dinner, Chadworth entered the old monitoring room.
He had not used it in months except for security reviews.
Twelve dark monitors faced him.
Rosamund appeared at the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Remember this room?”
“Yes.”
“I hate it.”
She smiled.
“That’s dramatic.”
“I discovered I was an idiot here.”
“You had demonstrated that previously.”
Chadworth looked offended.
She laughed.
He reached toward the main control panel.
The interior cameras in private family living spaces had already been reduced long ago.
Only entry corridors and security-sensitive common areas remained.
He shut down the old archived monitoring interface entirely.
Not security.
Surveillance.
Different things.
Rosamund watched.
“Symbolic?”
“Yes.”
“You billionaires love symbolism.”
He looked at her.
“You stayed eleven years.”
“I was paid.”
“You’re terrible at romance.”
“I learned from you.”
Fair.
---
They walked toward the dining room.
Gemma and Lorelai were setting the table.
Badly.
Forks on random sides.
Napkins folded into shapeless objects.
No staff correcting them.
Chadworth stopped.
Two years earlier, he had believed the greatest danger inside his house might be a quiet woman who knew his daughters too well.
He eventually learned the real danger was easier to miss.
It was doubt without conversation.
Wealth mistaken for character.
Romance mistaken for trust.
And a father so busy protecting an empire that his daughters had started keeping evidence because they were unsure he would believe them.
Rosamund had never manipulated his daughters into loving her.
She had listened when they spoke.
Fed them when they were hungry.
Protected memories of their mother.
Corrected them without humiliating them.
And when Chadworth failed them, she had refused to lie and tell the girls their father was perfect.
That was what the hidden cameras revealed.
Not theft.
Not manipulation.
Care.
The kind that expected nothing in return.
---
Lorelai waved.
“Dad! Sit.”
Chadworth walked toward the table.
Gemma looked behind him.
“Rosie sitting too?”
He looked at Rosamund.
Not assumption.
Question.
She smiled.
“If invited.”
Chadworth pulled out a chair.
“You’re invited.”
Rosamund sat.
No uniform.
No tray.
No position near the kitchen door.
At the table.
Gemma started telling a story about school.
Lorelai interrupted seventeen times.
Rosamund laughed.
Chadworth listened.
May you like
Really listened.
And for the first time in years, nobody inside the Prescott mansion needed a hidden camera to know what kind of family they had become.
