Part 7
The handwriting was not Nora’s.
The message had been printed in block letters with a black marker.
ASK WHY HE NEVER CAME WHEN SHE CALLED.
Mason read it twice.
Celeste read it over his shoulder.
Wren watched their faces.
“What does it say?” she asked.
Mason folded the paper.
“It says someone is trying to scare us.”
“That lady?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
Mason looked at Celeste.
Neither of them knew.
Outside, the guests were being quietly moved toward the dining room. Mason heard glasses clinking, chairs scraping, people speaking in soft urgent voices. The wedding had not ended officially, but everyone knew it was no longer happening.
Celeste stood by the open door, looking into the corridor.
“You said Nora stopped calling,” she said.
“Yes.”
“This note says she called.”
“I know.”
“Did she?”
Mason tried to remember.
Seven years could turn memory into a set of unreliable photographs. He remembered missed calls from unknown numbers in the months after he moved to New York. He remembered deleting messages without listening because he had believed Nora would leave one if she truly needed him. He remembered seeing a Massachusetts area code late one night and deciding it was a sales call.
He had built an entire version of his life on what he had chosen not to answer.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Celeste closed her eyes.
The disappointment in her face was not theatrical. It was almost private. That made it harder to bear.
“You don’t know,” she repeated.
“No.”
“You don’t know if she tried to tell you about a child.”
“No.”
“You don’t know who locked her in this room.”
“No.”
“You don’t know whether someone used my account to bring her into our wedding.”
“No.”
Mason looked at her.
“I know you didn’t do it.”
Celeste laughed once, quietly.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She looked at Wren.
Then back at him.
“I need you to understand something,” she said. “I want to believe you. I want to believe every instinct I have about you and about myself. But I am standing in my wedding dress while a little girl calls you Dad and says a woman in white told her to fear me.”
Mason said nothing.
Celeste’s eyes filled, but her voice remained controlled.
“Believing you is not the same as knowing what happened.”
Wren shifted in Mason’s lap.
“Are you going to marry him?” she asked.
The question moved through the room like a sudden cold draft.
Celeste looked at the child.
“I don’t know,” she said.
The honesty made Mason look away.
Wren seemed to accept it more easily than he did.
“My mommy said people get married when they promise not to leave.”
Mason’s jaw tightened.
Celeste’s face softened.
“Sometimes,” she said. “But promises are hard.”
Wren looked at Mason.
“Did you leave Mommy?”
He had no way around it now.
“Yes,” he said.
The child’s expression changed.
Not anger.
Something sadder.
“Why?”
Mason felt Celeste watching him.
He could have said he was young. He could have said Nora had not told him what she needed. He could have said they had both been afraid.
All of those things contained pieces of truth.
None of them were enough.
“Because I thought I could keep doing what I wanted and still have people wait for me,” he said.
Wren looked down at her backpack.
“That was mean.”
“Yes,” Mason said. “It was.”
Celeste’s mouth trembled slightly.
Mrs. Vann appeared again at the doorway, more hesitant this time.
“I have an update,” she said.
Mason rose, keeping Wren against his shoulder.
“What did you find?”
“The access card was used at the side service entrance at six fifteen. A woman entered through the gate wearing a pale wrap over a dark dress.”
Celeste looked at her.
“Did you see her face?”
“The camera angle is poor. She had her head down.”
“Did she leave?”
Mrs. Vann shook her head.
“Not through the main gate. Not with that card.”
Mason felt Wren stiffen.
“She’s still here,” the girl whispered.
Celeste looked at the corridor.
The villa had dozens of rooms, old passageways, wine storage spaces, terraces, staff areas, and guest suites. It had been built in stages across a century. It was elegant because it was complicated. It was complicated because generations of people had needed places to hide things.
Mason looked at Mrs. Vann.
“Can we keep the guests inside?”
“They are in the dining hall now.”
“Does anyone know why?”
“Only that there has been an emergency.”
Celeste lifted a hand to her temple.
“My mother?”
“She is with the guests.”
Mason noticed the question in Celeste’s face.
“Do you think your mother could have done this?” he asked.
She looked at him sharply.
“No.”
May you like
“I’m not accusing her.”
“Then don’t ask me as if you are.”
