Chapter 3: Headlights Across The Locked Garden
The headlights moved behind the hedge.
At first I thought the convoy had shifted, throwing a reflection across the wet leaves. Then the light passed again, low and slow, tracing the iron fence from inside the garden. A smaller beam followed it, trembling over the clipped shrubs. Someone was carrying a flashlight.
I pushed one hand against the stones and tried to stand. The photograph was still pressed beneath my other arm, protected from the damp inside Richard’s coat. My abdomen tightened hard enough to steal my breath. Beyond the hedge, the light stopped near the old glasshouse.
“Chloe? Where are you? Stay calm, everyone is watching us.”
My voice came out thin, but the garden answered with a faint scrape. Not an animal. A shoe against gravel.
Alexandre stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame. Victoria had vanished into the hall behind him. Her pearl necklace had not. It caught the headlights whenever she moved, bright points floating in the darkness.
I pointed toward the hedge. Alexandre followed my gaze. His expression changed before he looked back at his mother. Victoria made a sharp motion with her hand, ordering him to stay where he was.
He did not obey.
The garden gate was controlled from a narrow panel beside the service entrance. Alexandre crossed the courtyard, passed the small bag Victoria had thrown down, and entered a code with shaking fingers. The lock clicked, but the gate did not open. He struck the panel once, then used a key from his trouser pocket.
That key had been available to him all along.
The gate swung inward. Cold air rushed through the opening, carrying the smell of soaked earth and crushed rosemary. Alexandre went first. Richard followed with two members of the convoy, while I stayed close enough to use the fence for balance. No one spoke. Behind us, Victoria remained beneath the manor’s stone arch, watching the photograph hidden against my side.
We found Chloe beside the glasshouse.
She was sitting on the ground with her knees drawn up, wearing the cardigan she had taken from her room. Her face was pale, but there was no blood, no visible injury. A flashlight lay beside her. Near the door stood a tray with untouched food and a glass of water gone cloudy with dust.
When she saw me, she rose too quickly and stumbled. I reached her before she fell.
Her arms closed around my waist, careful of my stomach. I held the back of her head and felt her breathing against me. She smelled of rain and the lavender soap from the upstairs bathroom. She was frightened, but she was warm and whole.
Alexandre stopped several steps away. His eyes moved from Chloe to the tray, then to the locked garden gate.
Chloe’s coat lay folded on a bench. Her shoes were beside it. Her phone rested on top of the coat, switched off. Someone had placed her things there neatly, as if she were expected to remain in the glasshouse until the adults finished deciding what would happen to me.
I looked toward the manor. Victoria had not moved.
The small bag waited in the courtyard. Richard’s driver brought it to us after checking the garden path. Inside were two changes of underwear, a thin sweater, my passport copies, a toothbrush, and the medication I took for the pregnancy. There was no charger, no wallet, no winter coat, and none of Chloe’s clothes. The items had been selected, not gathered in panic.
At the bottom lay a folded envelope with my name written across it in Victoria’s precise hand.
I did not open it. I put it beside the photograph and closed the bag.
The pain returned, deeper this time, spreading across my back. I gripped Chloe’s shoulder and bent forward. Richard saw it immediately. His driver brought the car around while the convoy’s headlights washed over the locked windows of the manor.
Alexandre came toward us, but stopped when Richard opened the rear door.
I climbed in with Chloe beside me. The photograph stayed in my hands. Richard’s driver took the bag and placed it on the floor, where I could see it.
Alexandre remained outside in the rain. He looked once at the open garden gate, once at Victoria, and then at me. He had chosen Chloe, but only after his mother’s command failed.
May you like
The car pulled away before he could decide what to do next.
Through the rear window, Victoria stood beneath the archway, pearls bright at her throat. The manor swallowed her as the doors closed behind her. The garden disappeared into darkness, along with every record she could still reach.
