Chapter 2 - A Locket with Two Photographs“Where did you get that necklace?” Daniel demanded.
Emma's face tightened. “My mother gave it to me. Why?”
“Open it.”
“Not while you're talking to me like that.” Her voice stayed calm, but she stepped between him and Leo's chair. “He's frightened enough.”
Daniel looked at his son, whose small hands were trembling around the milk. Shame cut through his anger. “I'm sorry. My wife wore one just like it.”
Emma hesitated, then clicked the locket open. Inside were two fading photographs: Emma at twelve, and a woman whose face had been torn cleanly from the second picture.
“The missing half?” Daniel asked.
“I don't know. It was damaged years ago.”
Leo reached toward the tiny empty oval. “Blue lady.”
Emma stared at him. “What did he say?”
“Something he's never said to me.” Daniel kept his voice low. “My wife, Claire, disappeared eleven months ago. Leo hasn't been the same.”
“I'm sorry.” Emma's eyes flickered with recognition at Claire's name, then shut down. “I have to get back to work.”
Emma had learned to keep her voice measured at work. Some guests mistook calm for weakness. She knew the difference. Calm meant choosing not to turn a frightened child's bad evening into a spectacle. Weakness would have been pretending she hadn't noticed the man filming their table.
The manager appeared before she could leave. “Miss Ellis, a word. Now.”
Daniel watched the manager guide her toward the kitchen. His posture was all polite smiles; his grip on her elbow wasn't polite at all. Emma pulled free.
Owen called back. “The man at the table paid cash. No reservation. But Daniel—he used a parking pass registered to the Mercer Foundation.”
Daniel's foundation. The charity Claire had been auditing before she went missing.
He glanced toward the kitchen and saw Emma standing by a service door, phone against her ear. Her face changed as she listened.
Then she whispered, loud enough for Daniel to catch through the swinging door, “I didn't tell him anything.”
A pause.
“Please. Leave my little brother alone.”
She hung up, turned, and found Daniel staring.
“I need to go,” Emma said.
A message flashed across Daniel's phone from an unknown number. It contained a photograph taken seconds earlier: Leo at the table, Emma beside him.
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Underneath: ASK HER WHAT HAPPENED AT SAINT AGNES.
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