Part 11
Both girls froze.
The silence after the movement was immediate and terrible.
Mara’s face drained of color. “I’m sorry.”
Daniel set the lamp upright.
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“With what?”
She stared at him.
He crouched. “You don’t have to pay for the lamp.”
“I almost broke it.”
“It’s a lamp.”
Mara’s eyes filled.
He understood that she was not asking about a lamp.
He opened his arms.
She did not come to him.
Sophie climbed off the sofa and picked up the cushion. She placed it carefully where it had been.
Daniel sat on the floor.
After a minute, Sophie sat beside him. Mara remained standing.
“You can miss someone who hurt you,” Daniel said.
Mara’s mouth tightened. “I don’t.”
“That’s okay too.”
“She was nice sometimes,” Sophie whispered.
Mara turned on her. “Stop.”
Daniel lifted a hand. “She can say that.”
“But then people won’t believe us.”
The room became still.
Daniel looked at his older daughter.
“Who told you that?”
“No one.”
“Did Celeste?”
Mara’s eyes moved away.
“Mara.”
“She said if we told bad stories, people would ask why we still hugged her.”
Daniel sat very still.
Sophie began rubbing the seam of the cushion.
“What did she say would happen?” he asked.
Mara’s voice dropped. “She said they would know we were liars.”
Daniel wanted to reach for her. He did not.
“Liking the nice parts doesn’t make the bad parts untrue,” he said.
Mara’s chin trembled.
“You are allowed to remember all of it.”
She stood there another few seconds, then crossed the room and folded herself against him so suddenly that he nearly lost his balance.
Sophie joined them.
The three of them sat on the rug beside the crooked lamp until the soup burned in the kitchen.
A week after the incident, Daniel entered the main house alone.
He had avoided it except for brief trips with Naomi or the investigators. The cottage was becoming crowded. Clothes draped over chairs. Crayon fragments appeared under pillows. Sophie had adopted a chipped blue bowl and refused to eat cereal from anything else.
The big house stood immaculate and mostly empty.
Rosa had been placed on paid leave. Thomas stayed during the day to manage security and maintenance. The remaining staff worked reduced hours.
Daniel walked through rooms he had paid to decorate but had rarely inhabited.
In the breakfast room, one chair had a cushion tied to its back because Sophie was too short for the table. Beneath Mara’s place setting, he found tiny scratches carved into the wood.
Five vertical lines.
Then five more.
Then three.
He crouched and touched them.
Thomas appeared in the doorway. “Sir?”
“What are these?”
Thomas looked at the marks. “I don’t know.”
“Did Celeste sit here with them every morning?”
“Usually.”
“And you?”
“I was in the office or service wing.”
Daniel stood. “How many people worked in this house?”
“Eleven, including part-time staff.”
“Eleven people.”
Thomas said nothing.
Daniel walked to the pantry.
It was narrow but not small, with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a heavy wooden door. The lock was on the outside, a simple brass slide bolt intended to keep Sophie from raiding candy.
Daniel closed the door from within.
The pantry went dark except for a line of light near the floor.
He opened it at once.
“Did Celeste lock Sophie in here?”
Thomas looked sick. “I never saw that.”
“Did you hear her?”
“Once.”
“And?”
“Mrs. Mercer said Sophie was hiding.”
“Did you check?”
“No.”
Daniel stared at the bolt.
He unscrewed it with a screwdriver from the utility drawer. The work took longer than expected because one screw had been stripped. His hands slipped twice.
Thomas watched.
“You can go,” Daniel said.
“Sir, I should have—”
“Yes.”
“I was responsible for the property.”
“The property is fine.”
Thomas flinched.
Daniel dropped the brass bolt into the trash, then took it out again. Naomi would want it preserved in case it mattered.
Every object had become evidence.
Even silence had a chain of custody.
In Mara’s room, he found a notebook beneath the mattress.
He did not open it immediately.
The cover was green, decorated with stickers of stars and frogs. Her name was written inside in Claire’s handwriting. Daniel remembered Claire buying the notebook during one of her last good weeks, when she had taken Mara to a stationery store and let her choose anything.
It might contain private thoughts.
It might contain information relevant to the investigation.
Daniel called Naomi.
“Do not read it alone,” she said. “Photograph where you found it. Tell Denise.”
“It’s my daughter’s notebook.”
“That doesn’t make every page yours.”
He sat on the edge of Mara’s bed, ashamed that he needed the reminder.
Denise collected the notebook the next day with Mara’s permission.
Mara did not want Daniel to read it.
He said all right.
Three days later, she changed her mind.
She brought it to him in the cottage kitchen while Sophie was building a tower from cereal boxes.
“You can read this page,” Mara said.
She opened to a sheet covered with colored circles.
At first, Daniel thought it was a calendar. Then he saw tiny dates written inside each circle. Some were blue. Some yellow. Some red.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Weather.”
He looked toward the window. “Weather?”
“Blue was good. Yellow was careful. Red was bad.”
“Bad days?”
Mara nodded.
There were more red circles than blue ones.
“What made a day red?”
She sat across from him. “If Celeste was mad in the morning, it stayed red. If she was mad at night, sometimes the next day was red too.”
“What made her mad?”
“Noise. Spills. Clothes. Sophie asking questions. Me looking rude.”
“What does looking rude mean?”
Mara demonstrated by letting her face go blank.
Daniel had seen that expression every day since he came home.
“Why did you write it down?”
“So I knew.”
May you like
“Knew what?”
“Whether to keep Sophie close.”
