Leo: Dad, don't let Grandma yell at Mommy Elena anymore.
Richard: Leo... come here for a second, buddy.
Leo: No! I'm staying right here with my mom!
Victoria: Stop calling her your mother, Leo! She is a maid who scrubs our kitchen tiles for twelve dollars an hour!
Leo: She isn't a maid! She reads me stories every night when you go to your fancy parties!
Richard: What stories does she read you, Leo?
Leo: She reads the story about the little silver sailboat and the lighthouse! The one with the song at the end!
Richard’s breath caught in his throat. He looked at me, tears welling in his eyes as he took a slow step forward.
Richard: The silver sailboat story... Celeste wrote that story in her private journal before she died.
Elena: She wrote it for our baby, Richard. She sang the lighthouse song to him every single night through the hospital wall.
Richard: Nobody else knew those words... I never even read that journal to Leo because it hurt too much to open it.
Elena: I knew the words because Celeste and I sang them together when we were little girls in the orphanage.
Victoria: This is ridiculous! She stole the journal from the attic library three weeks ago! I saw her cleaning up there!
Elena: The attic library is locked with a master key code, Victoria. Only you and Richard have the passcodes.
Victoria: You picked the lock!
Elena: I didn't pick any lock, Victoria. I brought the words with me in my memory because they were written in my heart seven years ago.
Leo gripped my black apron tightly, looking up at his father with fierce determination in his young eyes.
Leo: Dad, when I was sick last month with the high fever, Grandma told the nanny to lock my bedroom door so I wouldn't ruin her dinner party.
Richard: What?! Mother, you locked my son in his room while he had a fever?!
Victoria: He was coughing loudly! The mayor and the estate auditors were sitting in the dining room!
Leo: Mommy Elena unlocked the side window and stayed with me all night! She put wet towels on my head until the hotness went away!
Richard: Is this true, Victoria? You locked a sick seven-year-old child in his room for a corporate dinner party?!
Victoria: It was an important business meeting, Richard! We were securing a twenty-million-dollar bank loan!
Richard: I don't care about a twenty-million-dollar bank loan! That is my son!
Richard turned toward his mother, his chest heaving with cold, uncontrollable rage. He pointed a trembling finger toward the massive front double doors of the foyer.
Richard: Get out of my house, Mother.
Victoria: What... what did you just say to me?
Richard: I said get out of my house!