What Meets the Eye...

Emily entered her home at around 3 o’clock that afternoon, still shaken at the thought of the fake paintings. “Mother?” she called. There was no answer, but one of their servants, Herold, came over to her. “Miss,” he said politely, “Your mother has asked me to tell you that she is with your father at the police station.”
”WHAT?!” Emily shouted. ”What happened? Is dad in jail?”
“Well,” Herold answered. “She wouldn’t tell me what the matter was, but from what I gathered,” by that, Emily knew he meant listened at the door, “It had something to do with the Picasso, and those Myatt-forgeries.”
Emily sat down at the floor against the wall, and stared emptily in front of her. What on earth was going on? Why did they have to go to jail for having been tricked into buying a fake? She was contemplating calling Hallie, when everything suddenly dawned on her. Her fathers refusal to go to London with them, his anger when they brought the Picasso, his secret room restricted for everyone but him, and their heavy flow of money all the time, when all Mr. Charles ever did was drawing a few book-covers and spending all his time in the mystery room. She knew it then. But it couldn’t be true. It simply couldn’t.
“Damn,” she said out loud. “Damn.”
She suddenly remembered what her father had told her years ago. “Don’t trust anyone, darling. Not even your closest. In a world as cold as this, anyone will betray you. Don’t trust anyone.”
If she hadn’t really gotten what he meant then, she had surely learned her lesson now.
Never trust anyone.