Chapter 1
Lucas’s finger remained pointed toward the narrow seam in the curved projection wall.
“The man behind there said he was your father.”
Everything inside me stopped.
Not the room.
Me.
Evelyn’s face had gone white beneath one reddened cheek.
Graham stopped trying to rise beside the overturned telescope trolley.
Mrs. Bennett stared at the wall as though she had spent years waiting for somebody else to notice it.
I crouched in front of my son.
“What man?”
Lucas gripped my jacket.
“The old man.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Tell Rafael Lorenzo is alive.’”
My breathing changed.
Lorenzo.
My father’s name.
A name Lucas had never heard from me.
My father had been dead for twelve years.
At least that was what I had buried.
A burned car.
A ruined signet ring.
A closed coffin because there had been almost nothing recognizable left.
I slowly stood.
Evelyn found her voice.
“He’s three.”
I looked at her.
Wrong sentence.
Graham tried next.
“He hears things. Makes stories.”
I stepped toward him.
“Then why were you spinning him until he forgot one?”
Silence.
I turned to Mrs. Bennett.
“You know what’s behind that wall.”
She swallowed.
“Yes.”
The word landed harder than a confession shouted across a room.
“How long?”
Her eyes filled.
“I knew there was a room.”
“Not what I asked.”
She looked toward Evelyn.
Fear.
Old.
Practiced.
I stepped between them.
“How long have you known there was a man inside?”
Mrs. Bennett whispered:
“Three weeks.”
Evelyn snapped her name.
I raised one hand.
She stopped.
Three weeks.
My father had supposedly been dead twelve years.
Yet someone using his name had spent three weeks hidden behind a wall in a building my family owned.
I looked at the seam.
Then at Evelyn.
“Open it.”
She stared.
“I don’t have the key.”
Mrs. Bennett reached slowly into her cardigan pocket.
A small brass key appeared in her palm.
Evelyn’s expression collapsed.
I took it.
Behind me, Lucas whispered:
“Daddy?”
I looked down.
“The man said you’d know his ring.”
My hand tightened around the key.
My father’s signet ring had been buried in the coffin.
Which meant one of two things.
May you like
Either the man behind that wall was lying—
or twelve years ago, my family buried the wrong ring.
