Chapter 2
The drive from Biloxi to Mobile passed in pieces: the dark ribbon of highway, the sweep of headlights across the windshield, Daniel’s hand resting near mine on the console. Lily slept in the back seat with her white sweater bunched under her cheek.
Gavin’s message glowed on my phone in the cup holder.
Keep Lily away from Claire’s things.
I’d read it so many times the words had begun to feel less like a warning and more like a hand reaching through the screen.
When we pulled into the driveway, Daniel shut off the engine but didn’t get out.
“You knew he might come,” I said.
“I knew there was a chance.”
“That isn’t the same as telling me why you asked Emily whether he’d be there.”
Daniel looked toward Lily. She was still asleep, her face turned to the window.
“I wanted to know if the past was walking into that room with us.”
“It did.” I picked up the phone and held it between us. “Apparently, it’s texting me now.”
His jaw tightened. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for the text. Tell me what he meant.”
Daniel looked at the dark windows of our house. “Claire was my sister.”
The words landed quietly, but the whole evening seemed to shift around them.
“Claire was Lily’s mother,” I said.
“Yes.”
I had known that much. I’d known Claire was gone, too. But until that moment, Daniel had never set the two facts side by side, never said her name as if it belonged in the center of our family.
“When she died, Lily was little,” I said. “I became her guardian. After we married, we adopted her together.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “I know what we did, Daniel. I just didn’t know Gavin was part of it.”
“He wasn’t part of our family.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He rubbed his thumb over the steering wheel. “Gavin and I worked together. Claire trusted him with something connected to the firm. I thought it was finished.”
“And you thought keeping me in the dark was safer?”
“I thought it was behind us.”
“That’s what people say when they don’t want to admit they’re afraid it isn’t.”
His eyes met mine. For a moment, the careful calm he’d worn at the wedding slipped, and I saw the strain underneath it.
“You’re right,” he said. “I was afraid.”
I wanted to press him—ask what Claire had trusted Gavin with, and what had gone so wrong that Daniel still watched the ballroom doors like danger might come through them. But Lily stirred in the back seat, and the questions caught behind my teeth.
We carried her inside without waking her. Daniel lifted her gently, her arms falling around his neck, and took her down the hall. I followed with the sweater.
In Lily’s room, the bedside lamp cast a warm circle over her stuffed animals and the picture she’d drawn of the three of us holding hands. Daniel eased her onto the bed. I pulled the blanket to her chin.
“Mom?” she murmured.
“I’m right here.”
“Are we home?”
“We are.”
She opened one eye, saw Daniel beside me, and let it close again. “Good.”
I brushed her hair from her forehead. Daniel stood near the door, watching us with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
A floorboard creaked behind him.
Lily’s eyes opened.
“Who’s Gavin?” she asked.
Daniel turned. “You heard us?”
“Just his name. And Claire’s.” Her small fingers curled around the blanket. “Is Gavin going to take me away?”
The question struck harder than anything Gavin had said to me at the wedding.
I sat beside her and took her hand. “No. Gavin doesn’t get to decide who your family is.”
“But he knows Claire?”
“He knew her,” Daniel said from the doorway. “That doesn’t give him any say over you.”
I squeezed Lily’s fingers gently. “I’m your mom. Daniel’s your dad. You’re safe here with us.”
She searched my face, looking for whatever children look for when a grown-up promises something frightening can’t happen. I held her gaze and let the answer be simple.
“Okay,” she whispered.
I kissed her forehead. Daniel waited until her breathing evened out before we left the room.
In the hallway, he finally told me about the book.
“Claire gave you something to keep for Lily,” he said. “A children’s book. She asked you not to let it get lost.”
“I thought it was just one of the books she used to read to her.”
“So did I, at first.”
I stared at him. “And where is it?”
“Where we put it. In the cabinet at the end of the hall.”
“Daniel, why didn’t you say that before?”
“Because I didn’t think Gavin knew it was here.” His voice dropped. “I thought the safest thing was to leave it alone.”
The old anger stirred in me—not the hot, sharp anger I’d once felt when Gavin walked out of our marriage, but something colder. The feeling of being asked to trust a silence that had already let someone else into our lives.
“Then we don’t leave it alone,” I said.
Daniel took a flashlight from the kitchen drawer. Together, we went to the narrow cabinet beside the hall closet. It was an old built-in, its lower section crowded with puzzles and board books Lily had outgrown but refused to give away.
Daniel crouched and pulled the bottom drawer open. He moved aside a stack of coloring books and reached beneath the shelf.
“Claire showed me the hiding place years ago,” he said. “She wanted it somewhere ordinary. Somewhere no one would think to look.”
His fingertips searched the gap behind the cabinet’s lower panel.
Then he stopped.
I watched his shoulders go rigid.
“What is it?”
May you like
Daniel drew his hand back and ran the flashlight along the floor beneath the cabinet. Dust marked the corners. In the middle of it, a dark, damp shoeprint pressed against the wood—its edges still sharp.
The hiding place was empty.
