CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Arthur’s POV

I gave Bryan three rules over the weekend.

The first was that he could go anywhere on the ground floor of the estate without asking.

The second was that the koi pond was for looking, not touching, after the incident two weekends ago where he had attempted to personally introduce himself to the largest fish and we had nearly lost a shoe.

The third was that the east corridor’s rarely used wing was off-limits, nothing dangerous lived there but the last time a new staff went to that side of the estate unsupervised, we spent about forty minutes locating a missing staff member who had only gone there for a lightbulb but lost his way around the layout.

Bryan nodded at all three rules with the solemn attentiveness of a child who was already calculating which ones had the most flexibility.

Soon, he had tested the first one enthusiastically, he already learnt from the past incident with the second one, so, he only watched the fishes as they swam in the water, with a considerably measured distance from the pond.

I had assumed that will be the case with the third one too, but Bryan amazed me like he always did.

I was in my study reviewing foundation correspondence when Margaret rushed in, startling out of my wit.

“Mr. Beaumont,” she panicked. “We can’t find Bryan, it seems he went to the east wing, and now, we couldn’t find him.”

“East wing?” I jumped out of my chair, grabbed my walking stick by the side of the chair and dashed out of the study, Margaret followed behind.

We were almost at the the east corridor. I could see staffs scampering all over the east wing.

Then I caught hold of Bryan, walking out of the side entrance, his little hands clutched around a ledger firmly.

I ran over to him in careful steps. “Bryan.”

He was actually holding two things, I saw the other clearly when I moved closer to him.

I led him back to the main wing and sat him down on one of the sofa in the sitting room.

The ledgers still clutched to his chest. I reached out for it.

One was an old photograph, sepia-edged and mounted on the stiff card backing of the previous century’s portrait studios. The second was a leather-bound ledger that had no business being in the hands of a five-year-old.

That ledger was older than everyone currently alive in this building combined.

He looked up at me with his bright, entirely unrepentant eyes.

“I found a secret corridor,” he announced, like he was announcing a moment from an Ultimate Search, “behind the door that looked like a wall.”

I say down on the sofa beside him.

“It had dusty stuff in it,” he said. “And this,” he pointed to the old photograph in my hand, “looks so much like me. Why am I in this photograph, Arthur?”

I burst out laughing.

“What do you mean, you?” I laughed again, amused at his innocence.

That old photograph was that of Xavier when he was younger, around same age as Bryan now. The little man as mistook the younger Xavier as himself, except that, as little as he was, he knew that picture was not taken in this era and age.

If Xavier and Bryan were to be of the same age now, I would have mistook Bryan for Xavier as well. The resemblance was too striking. That was the first thing that attracted me to Bryan.

Bryan was looking at me all along with he complete, unselfconscious certainty of a child who had recognized his own face in an old photograph and simply wanted an explanation about why it was there.

“That’s not you, my boy,” I said finally.

Bryan frowned, took the photograph back and stared into it like the answers to his questions will come to him when he stares enough.

“This is me, Papa” he argued. “Look at it very well, he has my face,” he touched his face and tilted the photograph sideways, as if angled enough will make me see that the boy in the photograph was him.”

Bryan now calls me Papa, and whenever he called me that, I feel so much joy in me. It feels like I’m being called by my own blood.

“Can I keep it?” Bryan asked.

“No,” I said, gently taking it back. “But I’ll tell you who it was another time. I promise.”

Bryan pouted in mild disagreement but he released the photograph.

Then he pointed to the ledger with renewed enthusiasm. “What about that? It has old writings in it when I opened it. Most of the words in it were too big for me but I saw Beaumont written somewhere in it. And I know you’re a Beaumont. Is it a family book?”

I looked at the again, I had dropped it on the sofa beside me.

Then I looked at Bryan again. “You know it’s wrong to go through stuffs not handed over to you directly… right?”

Bryan scowled slightly. “I’m sorry, Papa.”

“It’s okay,” I smiled and pulled him closer.

I took the ledger and opened it.

The handwriting inside was that of my grandfather’s. I know the handwriting with more than certainty. Growing up, my father always tell me one story, and that was about his own father.

A story of how my grandfather was born out of wedlock and was almost casted out of the family even when he was found. Reasons he said, was because his mother doesn’t fit into the elite circle social status as his father.

It was said that it took the intervention of God and the determination of my grandfather’s father to prevent his own relatives from denying him access to the family and its businesses.

The Beaumont fortune existed today because a forgotten child had refused to stay forgotten.

I looked at Bryan, his attention was already on the cartoon series now displaying on the television.

I closed the ledger and reached for my phone.

It was time to make the call I had been contemplating on.