Chapter 2: The Photograph in the Locked Study
David had never run from anything in his life.
Not from angry clients, not from lawsuits, not from the financial crisis that had nearly destroyed his firm eight years earlier.
Yet now he was sprinting down the hallway toward his study, leaving me standing at the bottom of the staircase while Mae gripped the railing as though the floor beneath her might disappear.
“David!”” I shouted.
He didn't stop.
I heard his study door slam. A lock clicked.
Mae descended the stairs slowly.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
“I shouldn't have said that.””
I stared at her.
“Who told you never to come home?””
She rubbed her temples.
“I don't know.””
“You just said he looked like someone you remembered.””
“He does.””
“From where?””
Mae closed her eyes.
“I see a dark room. Rain on a window. A man standing beside a car.”” Her breath quickened.
“Someone tells me to get in. Someone else is crying.””
“Who was crying?””
“I don't know!””
Her voice cracked, and she recoiled from me as though expecting a blow.
I immediately softened my tone.
“It's okay. I'm not angry with you.””
She stared at me suspiciously.
“People say that before they become angry.””
The remark struck me harder than it should have.
I guided her into the living room and sat her on the sofa. Her hands were ice-cold. I wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and brought her a glass of water.
She drank as though she hadn't had clean water in days.
“Mae,” I said gently, “I knew someone named Rebecca. She disappeared when I was eleven. You have the same scar she had, and you carry a hair clip that belonged to her.””
Mae looked at the silver clip in her palm.
“Maybe I am Rebecca.””
My heart lurched.
“Do you remember being called that?””
She shook her head.
“No. But when you said the name, something happened.”” She pressed a hand to her chest.
“It felt like someone had opened a door inside me.””
“Tell me what you saw.””
“A little girl. Brown hair. Missing a front tooth.””
I stopped breathing.
That was me at eleven.
“I was holding her hand,” Mae continued.
“We were standing in a kitchen. She was crying because someone had broken her birthday cake.””
Tears blurred my vision.
My birthday cake had been knocked off the kitchen counter the afternoon before Rebecca vanished. I'd cried for an hour, convinced I'd ruined my own party.
Rebecca had sat on the floor with me, scooping frosting onto a plate and telling me we could still eat it.
Nobody else had ever known how upset I'd been.
“What else?”” I whispered.
Mae shook her head violently.
“Nothing. It's gone.””
I reached for her hand.
She let me take it.
For a moment, I was eleven again, holding Rebecca's hand beneath the kitchen table while my parents argued in the next room.
Then I remembered David's face.
His terror.
His warning.
I stood abruptly.
“Stay here. I'll be back.””
I walked to David's study and tried the handle.
Locked.
“David, open the door.””
No response.
“I'm not asking again.””
I heard something scrape across the floor.
Then his voice came through the wood.
“You need to get Mae out of this house.””
I stared at the door.
“Ten minutes ago, you insisted she stay.””
“Things have changed.””
“What things?””
“Claire, please.””
The word please frightened me more than his anger would have.
David never pleaded.
I leaned closer.
“Did you know who she was when you brought her here?””
Silence.
“David?””
Finally, he answered.
“Yes.””
My knees nearly buckled.
“How long have you known?””
“Not long.””
“That's not an answer.””
“Claire, I can explain everything, but not while she's here.””
“Why? Because she might remember something you don't want me to know?””
The lock turned.
David opened the door just enough for me to see his face.
He looked exhausted. His collar was crooked, and sweat darkened the hair at his temples.
“Your father made mistakes,” he said.
I froze.
“My father?””
David glanced over his shoulder, then back at me.
“Your father was involved in things you never understood.””
“My father died six years ago.””
“I know.””
“Then explain what he has to do with Rebecca.””
He swallowed.
“Not here.””
I tried to push past him, but he blocked the doorway.
“Move.””
“No.””
“Move, David!””
He grabbed my shoulders.
“Listen to me. You have no idea what you're opening up.””
I shoved him away.
“Then tell me!””
He looked at me with an expression I couldn't recognize.
Not anger.
Not guilt alone.
Fear.
“Your father didn't want Rebecca to disappear,” he whispered.
“He wanted her to stay gone.””
Before I could respond, a phone began vibrating on his desk.
David glanced at the screen.
The name displayed there made his face go white.
*UNKNOWN CALLER.*
He rejected it.
The phone rang again.
He rejected it a second time.
Then a message appeared.
I saw only a few words before he snatched the phone away.
She is in your house. You have until midnight.
My mouth went dry.
“Who sent that?””
David shoved the phone into his pocket.
“No one you need to know.””
I laughed bitterly.
“You've brought a woman into our home who may be the missing girl from my childhood. You admit my dead father wanted her gone. And someone is threatening you because she's here.””
I stepped closer.
“Tell me what the hell is happening.””
David stared at me for a long moment.
Then he said something that made my blood run cold.
“Rebecca wasn't the only person who disappeared that night.””
I couldn't speak.
He turned away and opened a drawer beneath his desk.
Inside lay a thick envelope tied with a faded ribbon.
He removed a photograph and held it out to me.
It showed a younger David standing beside a dark sedan outside a building I recognized immediately.
The old children's hospital where Rebecca had spent two weeks recovering from a bicycle accident when we were kids.
But David looked barely twenty in the photograph.
He should never have been anywhere near that hospital.
“Why were you there?”” I asked.
He rubbed his ring again.
“Because I was looking for someone.””
“Who?””
He looked toward the living room.
“Your mother.””
My stomach tightened.
My mother had died when I was sixteen. For years, I'd believed her death was the result of a sudden heart condition. My father had refused to discuss the details, and I'd been too consumed by grief to question him.
“What does my mother have to do with Rebecca?””
David's expression crumpled.
“She was trying to help her.””
“Help her with what?””
Before he could answer, we heard a crash from the living room.
I ran.
Mae was standing beside the overturned coffee table. The glass of water had shattered, and she was staring at a small photograph she'd pulled from her grocery bag.
Her fingers trembled.
“Claire,” she whispered.
I approached cautiously.
“What is it?””
She held up the picture.
It showed a young woman with dark hair standing beside a little girl in a yellow raincoat.
The woman was my mother.
The girl was me.
On the back, someone had written a date.
October 14, 2003.
The night Rebecca vanished.
But it was the sentence underneath the date that made my legs go weak.
If anything happens to me, take Claire to the woman in Room 17.
Mae looked up at me.
“Do you know who wrote this?””
I shook my head.
“No.””
She turned the photograph over again, studying the handwriting.
Then she whispered the words she'd apparently been trying to remember for years.
“Room seventeen.””
Her face crumpled.
“That's where they told me my daughter was waiting.””
I stared at her.
“Your daughter?””
Mae began to cry.
“I think I had a little girl.””
From the hallway, David said, “You did.””
We both turned.
He stood there holding a second envelope.
And when Mae looked at him, she whispered a name that made him drop it.
“Michael.””
David's real first name was David.
But Michael had been the name my father used when speaking about the man who'd driven away the night Rebecca disappeared.
The man he claimed he'd never been able to identify.
David bent to retrieve the envelope.
I stepped on it before he could reach it.
“Don't,” I said.
For the first time, my husband looked at me like an enemy.
“You have no idea what you're doing.””
I pressed my foot harder against the envelope.
“Then tell me.””
He straightened slowly.
And from somewhere outside the mansion came the sound of a car door slamming.
Mae turned toward the front windows.
A black sedan had pulled into the driveway.
A man in a gray coat stepped out, carrying a leather briefcase.
He looked directly at the house.
Then he raised his phone and took a photograph of our front door.
David whispered one word.
“Hell.””
The doorbell rang.
May you like
And the man outside called through the glass.
“David? It's time we finished what we started twenty-three years ago.””
