Chapter 4: A Song From Before Me
The creak came from behind me.
I turned. The east-wing corridor was empty. At its end, the old door sat in its frame, closed and still. The technician’s flashlight moved over the hinges, then along the wall. Daniel’s two officers checked the passage beyond it.
No one found anyone.
That wasn’t the same as finding an explanation.
“Seal the wing,” I said. “No one enters without my authorization. Preserve the footage and the access logs—make copies before anyone touches them.”
Daniel watched me. “I’ll handle it.”
“You’ll stay here while they do.”
His jaw tightened, but he nodded.
I left the mansion with the sound of that creak following me down the front steps. By the time I reached St. Mary’s, I had called the secure guest suite twice. Ruth answered both times. The girls were safe, she said. They’d eaten something and were trying to settle down.
“Tell them I’ll call before bed,” I said.
“They want to hear it from you.”
“I know. I’ll call.”
Claire was awake when I entered her room, though “awake” wasn’t quite the word for how she looked. She was propped against the pillows, pale beneath the hospital lights, with an IV line running into her arm. A doctor had told me her tests were still underway. She was stable, but weak. They had not settled on a cause for her collapse.
Her eyes moved to my face.
“Are the girls safe?”
“They’re with Ruth in the guest suite. The mansion’s being checked.”
A little of the tension left her shoulders. Not all of it.
“Did you find something?”
“I found a camera gap. And a door that doesn’t appear on the current security maps.”
Claire closed her eyes for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For not telling you sooner.”
I pulled a chair beside the bed, leaving space between us. “You’re in the hospital. You don’t owe me an explanation tonight.”
Her eyes opened again. “You came all this way to say that?”
“I came because my daughters were frightened, and because you were trying to protect them while you were sick. I should have noticed.”
She looked down at her hands. The hospital bracelet shifted against her wrist.
“I could have told you.”
“You could have. But you also thought you might lose your job if you did.”
She didn’t answer. The silence told me enough.
“Your employment doesn’t depend on staying quiet,” I said. “Not about your health. Not about my family. Not about what you’ve seen in that house.”
“Mr. Whitmore—”
“Nathan.”
She hesitated, then tried again.
“Nathan, I don’t want you to think I used the girls to get close to you.”
“I don’t.”
“You barely know me.”
“That’s true. And it’s my fault I didn’t try to.”
A faint crease appeared between her brows, as if she hadn’t expected the admission. I wasn’t used to making them. I was even less used to discovering how much they mattered.
“Emma said you knew Evelyn before she died,” I said. “You told me you’d explain when the girls were safe. They’re safe now. But you’re still recovering, so you can stop whenever you need to.”
Claire stared at the blanket.
“I met Evelyn at the community music program on East Ninety-Third Street.”
I had never heard her mention it. I wasn’t sure Evelyn had ever mentioned it either. That bothered me more than it should have.
“She volunteered there on Saturdays,” Claire continued. “She helped the little kids with the songs. She wasn’t the kind of volunteer who stood at the front and waited to be thanked. She learned everyone’s name. She noticed who didn’t want to sing.”
A picture rose in my mind: Evelyn kneeling to speak to a child, her attention steady and unhurried. I knew that version of her. I had seen it in our home. I hadn’t known there were rooms of her life I had never entered.
“What were you doing there?” I asked.
“Helping with the children’s music sessions. I was older than most of the kids, but not by much. I’d show up early and put chairs out. Evelyn started asking me to help.”
“You were friends?”
“Eventually.” Claire’s mouth lifted, then fell. “At first, she was just kind to me. There’s a difference. I’d had plenty of people who were friendly when they wanted something. Evelyn was kind when nobody was watching.”
The words landed with quiet force. I thought of how quickly I had judged people by what they could do for me, and how seldom I’d asked what a person might be carrying.
“She talked about you?” I asked.
“Not at first. She talked about the girls. Then about you.”
I almost smiled. “And what did she say?”
“That you were impossible to persuade when you’d decided something.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She said you loved your family even when you didn’t know how to show it.”
I looked at the window. Outside, the city pressed its lights against the dark.
“Did she say that before we met?”
“Yes.”
It took me a second to understand. “She knew me before we met?”
“Not personally. She’d heard about you. She told me she thought you were someone who’d learned to mistake being needed for being loved.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t meant to hold.
“That sounds less like her than the first thing.”
“She said it gently.”
“She usually did.”
Claire’s fingers curled around the edge of the blanket. “The song came later. One afternoon the kids were upset. A little girl didn’t want her mother to leave. Evelyn sat with her and made up a tune about the stars staying awake. She sang it until the girl stopped crying.”
I could hear the melody in my memory—soft, rising at the end of each line. It had been Evelyn’s, but I had always thought of it as something that belonged only to our family.
“She sang it to you?”
“Once, after the program. I was having a hard day.” Claire gave a small, embarrassed shrug. “I told her I didn’t need a song. She sang it anyway.”
I looked at her. “And you remembered it.”
“I remembered what it felt like to hear it.” Her voice thinned. “A person can be scared and still feel less alone.”
The first time I’d heard Lily and Emma singing it after Evelyn died, I had left the room. I’d told myself I was giving them privacy. The truth was simpler: I couldn’t bear to be present for their grief.
“Why didn’t you tell me when you started working at the house?” I asked.
Claire studied my face before answering.
“I didn’t know how. The girls started humming the tune. I recognized it, and I sang it with them. They asked if I knew their mother. I said I did.”
“And then?”
“They asked me to sing it again.”
I imagined my daughters asking for a piece of their mother, and Claire giving them what she had kept from those Saturdays. Then I imagined them believing that the song might disappear if she did.
“They called you Aunt Claire.”
“I told them they didn’t have to.”
“They chose it.”
“Yes.”
For a moment, the room settled into the hush of distant monitors and footsteps in the hallway. Claire looked toward the dark window.
“Evelyn never told me she sang the song to the girls,” she said. “I only found out after I started working there.”
“Did she tell you she wanted you to work for us?”
“No.”
“Then why did you take the job?”
She looked back at me, but the answer didn’t come. Her gaze had fixed on the doorway. Fear sharpened her face, and for an instant she seemed to be listening for the same slow footsteps the girls had described.
I didn’t press.
“Claire,” I said, “what happened at the mansion?”
She swallowed. “I didn’t want to frighten the girls.”
“They’re already frightened.”
“I know.”
“And you were frightened too.”
Her eyes shone, though no tears fell. “I heard it before they did.”
A knock sounded at the open door. A nurse stepped in to check Claire’s monitor, and I waited until she finished and left.
Claire’s hands were trembling now. I moved the water closer, but she didn’t reach for it.
“You don’t have to tell me tonight,” I said. “But I need to know whether the girls are in danger.”
She looked toward the door again.
“I kept a recording,” she said.
My chest tightened. “Of what?”
“Someone outside the children’s corridor.”
The words hung between us.
“Where is it?”
May you like
“In my bag. I saved it because I thought no one would believe me without proof.”
And then Claire told me what the recording showed.
