“You know what’s strange? That girl out there, your new maid.” Another pause. “She looks like her. Victoria. Around the eyes, especially. I noticed it the moment she came around the corner.”
He laughed softly, as if trying to soften the edge of his own words.
“Probably just my imagination working too hard. I’ve been traveling. I’m tired. Ignore me.”
Mr. Caleb said nothing.
“Ignore me,” Benjamin said again, lighter this time. “Pass the salt.”
In the kitchen, Rebecca stood very still. The dish cover was in her hands. The afternoon sun was coming through the window. The clock above the shelf was ticking.
Victoria. She looks like her.
She breathed out slowly through her nose, set the dish cover down, and picked up the water jug that needed refilling. She had a job to do. She would do her job.
She walked back into the dining room with the water jug and refilled both glasses with a steady hand and a calm face, and neither man could have known that their conversation had just landed somewhere inside her like a seed falling into soil, quietly, without fanfare, not yet ready to grow.