Chapter 2
Nadine refused to explain the hairpin.
Ashton did worse.
He claimed I was frightening Elsie by treating imagination like evidence.
I looked at him.
“My daughter described a hidden door she’s never been allowed to use.”
He said nothing.
Good.
Rafe inspected the passage.
Fresh footprints.
One adult.
Small shoe.
Female.
Entered from the winter garden.
No forced exterior door.
Whoever came through the estate either possessed a key or was being admitted.
I looked at Nadine.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“Then why cover Elsie’s mouth?”
Her face tightened.
“Because that song is unhealthy.”
I almost laughed.
“For whom?”
Silence.
Elsie sat at the low table while a housekeeper replaced her lunch.
She hummed again unconsciously.
Nadine flinched.
There.
Not grief.
Recognition.
I remembered something Marina once told me before we married.
Her mother taught both daughters a private lullaby.
Both daughters.
I had met only one.
“What was Marina’s sister’s name?”
Nadine’s eyes lifted.
Ashton looked sharply at her.
I knew then.
“Elise,” I said.
Marina told me Elise Arden died when they were young.
A winter boating accident.
No body recovered.
Her family rarely discussed it.
At the time I respected the grief.
Now Nadine looked as though I had opened a locked room.
“She died,” Ashton said.
I slowly turned toward him.
“How do you know?”
He froze.
He had been sixteen when Marina and I met.
He never knew the Arden family socially.
Yet he answered before Nadine.
I stepped closer.
“You’ve seen her.”
“No.”
“Then you’ve heard about her.”
Nothing.
Rafe returned carrying an old security ledger.
Not paperwork from outside.
Internal gate records.
Three unexplained garden-door openings over the last month.
Always between midnight and two.
Always manually overridden from inside.
Authorization code belonged to Nadine.
I looked at my aunt.
“Three visits.”
Her face went pale.
Elsie whispered from across the room:
“Mommy came four.”
Four.
Meaning one visit never touched the registered door.
May you like
Someone had another way inside.
And Nadine had only controlled three of them.
