Chapter 3
I moved Elsie into my rooms that night.
Not because I believed the visitor wanted to hurt her.
Because I no longer knew what I believed.
Nadine and Ashton remained under guard in separate rooms.
No family conversations.
No opportunity to align stories.
I sat beside Elsie until she fell asleep.
Halfway there, she whispered:
“Mommy not mommy?”
The question hurt more than I expected.
I stroked her hair.
“I don’t know who you saw.”
“She looks Mommy.”
There.
Not imagination.
Resemblance.
“What did she say?”
Elsie thought.
“Call me Ellie.”
My heart stopped.
Elise.
Ellie.
“What else?”
“She said song was ours.”
I closed my eyes.
That sounded like something Marina would say.
Elsie continued.
“She cries when I say Mommy.”
Of course.
The visitor had not told Elsie she was Marina.
My daughter had decided that herself.
A woman resembling her dead mother entered at night, smelled like flowers, knew Marina’s private song, and cried when Elsie called her Mommy.
I knew who she was before proof arrived.
The dead sister was not dead.
Elise Arden was alive.
Then Elsie said something else.
“She looks behind painting.”
I opened my eyes.
“What painting?”
She pointed toward the art room through the hallway.
The large landscape Marina painted during pregnancy.
Mountains.
Lake.
One white house.
It had hung above Elsie’s drawing table since she could walk.
“Did Ellie take anything?”
“No.”
“Did she put anything there?”
Elsie nodded.
“A little paper.”
I stood.
The painting came off the wall ten minutes later.
Behind it, folded into the wooden backing, was a note.
Not from Elise.
Marina’s handwriting.
One sentence.
IF ELISE RETURNS, LISTEN BEFORE NADINE TELLS YOU WHY SHE SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED.
My aunt’s name.
Written by my dead wife.
Four years before any secret visitor entered my daughter’s art room.
May you like
Marina had known her sister was alive.
And she had expected Nadine to lie when Elise finally came back.
