Three weeks before the dinner, my father complained about Sophie in the portrait gallery.
She had placed a sticker on the frame of my great-grandfather.
Not the painting.
The frame.
A dinosaur sticker.
I removed it.
No damage.
I made her apologize to the house curator.
Reasonable.
Vittorio said:
“This is what comes from giving children equal access.”
I answered:
“She put a sticker on wood, Dad. Rome remains standing.”
He did not smile.
“She has no sense of boundary.”
“She is four.”
“She is your daughter. That makes correction harder because everyone is afraid of you.”
That sentence should have interested me.
Instead:
“Then they can tell me if she misbehaves.”
“No one tells you anything about her.”
“Bethany just did.”
“She protects Sophie before the house.”
“She protected a child from being humiliated over a sticker.”
Vittorio’s mouth hardened.
“Your mother would never have allowed this.”
My mother had been dead three years.
Using her annoyed me enough to end the conversation.
“Do not.”
He did not.
Then Celeste said later:
“Vittorio thinks Sophie needs one clear consequence.”
I answered:
“She had one. She apologized and lost stickers at the estate for a week.”
Celeste laughed.
“That is not consequence.”
