Chapter 3
The red box belonged to Anna’s mother.
Small.
Wooden.
Old-fashioned.
Anna kept it somewhere in the Whitaker estate after she married Mark.
“What was inside?”
Mark crossed his arms.
“Nothing important.”
I stared at him.
“Then why did your wife hide it?”
“She was dramatic.”
Same language Claudia used.
Interesting.
I looked at Ethan.
“Do you know where Mommy put the box?”
He looked frightened.
“No.”
Claudia laughed.
“Of course he doesn’t.”
Ethan immediately folded inward.
There.
That reaction.
She had asked him before.
“How many times have you questioned him about it?”
Claudia’s face hardened.
“I asked a child a simple question.”
“And when he didn’t answer?”
“He refused.”
“He’s three.”
“He understands more than you think.”
I stood.
“So you put him outside.”
Mark stepped forward.
“That wasn’t about the box.”
I turned.
“What was it about?”
Silence.
Ethan answered from the blanket.
“I said Mommy coming back.”
Nobody moved.
I looked at him.
“Why did you say that?”
“She told me.”
My chest tightened.
“When?”
“Before snow.”
“Today?”
He nodded.
Mark went pale.
Claudia’s wineglass slipped slightly in her hand.
I heard the stem click against her ring.
Ethan continued.
“Mommy called.”
The room changed.
Anna had supposedly vanished eleven months ago.
Yet my grandson was telling me she had called that very day.
Claudia recovered first.
“He dreams about her.”
Ethan shouted:
“No!”
Then his voice broke.
“She said don’t tell Claudia.”
That was why he had been punished.
Not disobedience.
May you like
Silence.
A three-year-old had been left in a blizzard because he refused to betray his mother.
