“I’m getting Mother.”
When she was gone, Elena reached beneath the folded cloth inside the violin case.
“The paper was coming apart,” she said. “We had it placed in a protective sleeve.”
“We?”
But she was already holding it out.
His name appeared across the front.
For my Maxwell, when someone can put this into his hands safely.
He knew the uneven capital M.
He knew the way his mother crowded the last words onto a line rather than start another.
For an instant, he was fourteen again, finding notes in his schoolbooks.
Eat something green.
You do not have to win to make me proud.
Home before dark, Mouse.
He unfolded the letter.
Then Vanessa returned with Eleanor, and the wedding coordinator hurried behind them, and somehow they were all moving into the ballroom because Eleanor insisted he needed to sit down.
Someone put champagne into his hand.
He turned the page.
And read about the locked door.
Now the key swung between Elena’s fingers beneath the chandeliers.
Maxwell reached for it, then stopped.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your mother put it around my neck.”
“When?”
“The night of the fire.”
Eleanor made a sharp sound.
“This is grotesque.”
Elena kept her eyes on Maxwell.
“I was five.”
He looked at her face properly.
Soft brown eyes. High cheekbones. A faint pale line beside her left eyebrow.
Something flickered in his memory.
A little girl under the kitchen table.
A peeled orange divided into careful pieces.
His mother saying, She’s shy, Mouse. Give her a minute.
“There was a child,” he whispered.
Eleanor spoke quickly.
“There were always servants’ children coming through this house.”
“My mother worked here,” Elena said. “Mara Marlowe.”
The name meant nothing to most of the room.
It meant something to Eleanor.
Maxwell saw it.
“Mara died that winter,” Elena continued. “A car accident on the coast road. Your mother let me stay while she tried to find my aunt.”
“An unfortunate employee,” Eleanor said. “That has nothing to do with—”
“Then why did you tell the police no child had been in the house?”
Eleanor’s mouth closed.
Elena’s hand shook harder.
Maxwell glanced at the guards.
“Open the doors.”
Vanessa took a step toward them.
“No one is being held here,” he said. “But call the police. Ask them to send someone concerning the fire at Halcyon House twenty-one years ago.”
“Maxwell,” Eleanor said, “think carefully.”
“For once,” he answered, “I intend to.”
The doors opened.
Nobody left.
Elena remembered the night in pieces that did not fit together until she was much older.
A bowl of soup.
Isabelle kneeling to button her cardigan.
Wind worrying the conservatory windows.
