The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Two

The Stoddart Residence

Boston

Massachusetts

"Grace...is that...a collar?" Brianna Palmer sighed, staring intently at her monitor, full of concern for her youngest daughter. She had talked to her son-in-law and his parents over the weekend, so she understood the situation, but she wanted to make quite sure that her baby girl really knew what she was doing. Her whole family, and some of their friends and political allies, lived complicated lives. Everyone was involved with the Rosen Foundation in some capacity, because they were either born into it, or driven by the original attack on Caitlin and Brianna herself. But the actual level of involvement was up to the individual, because they all had a right to a private life. Jacob and Sharon Rosen had never asked anything of anyone that they were not happy to give, and when their baton was passed to her big brother and her husband, and her own children were old enough to help, the same rule applied. Her middle children, James and Sophie, supported the family and had both worked behind the scenes at times, but had chosen not to be active. James had actually followed his father's original career into academia, and was a professor of modern history at the University of California in Los Angeles, far from the shadows of Reformism, whilst Sophie had married a farmer and lived a quiet, happy life in rural Pennsylvania, closer to the Amish community than any Christian Reformists. But her eldest son was fully and happily committed to his political career, and Grace had been determined to play her own part ever since she was a little girl. Falling in love with Brett Stoddart, who along with Jake was earmarked as a potential White House candidate, who could operate in the upper echelons of the Republican party, had given Grace her role, and it was an important one. And Grace had always known what she would have to do at times.

"Yes...Miss Klein did not want to leave me alone unrestrained...so as she had to remove my mittens to let me type, she has tethered me to the chair?" Grace admitted, chewing on her bottom lip and not looking at her Mom, like a guilty teenager.

"She thinks you might run away or just leave the room?"

"No, Mom...I don't think so...everyone is just trying to teach me a lesson, I think...I am going to have to be under discipline when we go out, so this is like practise?" Grace explained reluctantly, not particularly keen to confess her sins to her mother. Brianna sighed, doing her best not to overreact, but hating seeing Grace upset.

"Until we get Brett to Washington, you do have to impress the right people, love? And you always knew that, didn't you?" She said gently, not wanting to add her own condemnation to the other voices of disapproval Grace had no doubt been listening to. "And now that he has got involved in this ghastly hospital project, his work with BIB is really important...your father needs more information?"

"I know, Mom...there is something weird going on in Boston...and I messed up...I never realised what he was doing with the bank...and I thought that I could just wing it here?"

"You can 'wing it' in Washington and that is where you have spent most of your time over the last twelve years...it's more cosmopolitan in the capital...more shallow...but Boston is the deep end...it's as real as it gets, and the fakes are quickly sniffed out?" Brianna said with a frown, watching her daughter squirming with embarrassment. "But you will be fine, if you want to be...it sounds like the situation is rectifiable?"

"Brett offered me a divorce, Mom?" Grace moaned, blurting it out, because she simply had to confide in someone, but she was ashamed to admit it to anyone. Brianna nodded, taking note of her daughter's turn of phrase. Saying that Brett had offered her a divorce suggested that he did not want to separate, but wanted Grace to know that she had a way out, if she did not want to stay. And that was clever, she thought, because it had stopped Grace in her tracks and made her really think about what she was doing.