Chapter 7 - The Door Chadworth Should Have Opened Months Ago
Six weeks passed.
The date that should have been Chadworth and Sabina’s wedding arrived on a Saturday morning.
There were no flowers.
No orchestra.
No guests.
No champagne.
Instead, Chadworth woke at 7:03 because Gemma climbed onto his bed and announced that Lorelai had burned toast.
“I did not burn it,” Lorelai shouted from the hallway.
“You made it black!”
“That’s toasted!”
Chadworth laughed into his pillow.
Six months earlier, noise in his mansion had annoyed him.
Now silence frightened him more.
He got up.
The three of them ate breakfast together.
Rosamund joined them after Chadworth insisted.
She still worked in the house, though her role had changed.
Chadworth had offered her a substantial raise and a formal position overseeing the children’s household needs.
Rosamund initially refused.
“I don’t want them thinking affection is my job.”
Chadworth understood.
Eventually they agreed on something simpler.
She would remain part of the household staff, with better pay, clear authority to contact Chadworth directly, and—most importantly—the freedom to speak whenever she believed something concerned the girls.
No chain of command.
No assistant blocking her.
No one deciding Chadworth was too busy.
He established the same rule for Lorelai and Gemma.
If either daughter needed him, his door opened.
Literally.
The study door that had once remained closed during business calls now stayed open whenever he worked from home.
One afternoon, Gemma wandered in while Chadworth was speaking to twelve executives.
She held a broken crayon.
“Daddy.”
Every face on the screen went silent.
Old Chadworth would have waved her away.
New Chadworth muted the call.
“What happened?”
“It broke.”
He looked at the crayon.
Then at her.
“That’s an emergency?”
She nodded solemnly.
He found another crayon.
“Resolved.”
She kissed his cheek and ran out.
Chadworth unmuted the call.
No one laughed.
Then his CFO smiled.
Chadworth smiled too.
“Where were we?”
Life did not collapse.
The company survived the broken crayon.
That realization changed more than Chadworth expected.
He had spent years believing his constant availability was indispensable.
It was not.
He had confused importance with presence.
Sometimes the most important place he could be was not the boardroom.
It was the floor beside Gemma while she colored.
Or Lorelai’s doorway while she read him something she had written.
One evening, Lorelai handed him a stack of pages.
“What’s this?”
“My story.”
“All of it?”
“Chapter one.”
Chadworth looked at the thickness.
“How long is chapter two?”
“Longer.”
He laughed.
“What’s it about?”
“A king who owns everything but doesn’t know his castle is haunted.”
Chadworth raised an eyebrow.
“Subtle.”
Lorelai grinned.
He read every page.
The king was arrogant.
Busy.
Frequently absent.
Chadworth suspected the resemblance was not accidental.
At the end, the king discovered the ghost was not the monster.
The monster was loneliness.
Chadworth had to stop reading for a moment.
Lorelai noticed.
“You don’t like it?”
“I love it.”
“You look sad.”
“Good stories do that sometimes.”
She smiled.
Then leaned against him.
Later that night, Chadworth walked through the mansion.
He passed the monitoring room.
The door was closed.
He stopped.
For months after Sabina left, he had hated that room.
It represented suspicion.
Failure.
Everything he had not seen until technology forced him to look.
He opened the door.
The monitors were dark.
Malcolm had modified the system.
Cameras remained active for normal security purposes, but Chadworth no longer sat there watching his family.
He did not want to learn about his daughters through screens.
He wanted them to tell him.
And that required something cameras could never provide.
Trust.
Rosamund appeared behind him.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
She looked into the room.
“I hate that place.”
“So do I.”
“Then why are you standing here?”
Chadworth considered the question.
“Because it saved us.”
Rosamund shook her head.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“The cameras showed you something. They didn’t save anyone.”
“What did?”
“Your daughters telling the truth.”
Chadworth smiled faintly.
“And you.”
Rosamund looked away.
“I just listened.”
“Exactly.”
He closed the door.
That evening, they sat on the terrace while Lorelai and Gemma played nearby.
Rosamund had become comfortable enough around Chadworth to occasionally challenge him.
It was one of the things he valued most.
“Toronto next week?” she asked.
“One night.”
“Lorelai’s school presentation is Tuesday.”
“I know.”
“You’re back Monday?”
“Monday afternoon.”
Rosamund narrowed her eyes.
Chadworth laughed.
“I will be here.”
“You said that last time.”
“I canceled the Tuesday meeting.”
Rosamund looked surprised.
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“For a fourth-grade presentation?”
“For my daughter’s presentation.”
Rosamund smiled.
“Good.”
Chadworth looked toward Lorelai.
She was helping Gemma tie a ribbon around the stuffed rabbit.
He had nearly lost something he could never have purchased again.
Not their legal custody.
Not their address.
Something subtler.
Their willingness to reach for him.
He understood now how easily children stopped knocking when adults repeatedly failed to open the door.
He had been fortunate.
Lorelai had knocked one more time.
And Rosamund had made sure someone finally heard.
But one question remained.
What happened when Sabina was truly gone?
Would the girls recover?
Would Chadworth’s promises survive the return of ordinary life?
He would receive his answer months later—not through a hidden camera, a security report, or a billionaire’s investigation.
It would come from Gemma.
May you like
And it would be only five words long.
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