Chapter 2 - The Night the House Burned
Three years earlier, Elena Reyes had been the only person who could get Theo to sleep without leaving a night-light on.
He was four then, all scraped knees and serious questions, with a habit of hiding under the nursery table whenever adults argued. Elena had been hired as his nanny after his mother, Nora, noticed how he clung to strangers and went silent around loud voices.
"You don't have to make him brave," Nora had told Elena on her first day. "Just make him feel safe. The brave part can come later."
She learned Theo's favorite pancakes, the song he wanted twice every night, and the way he pressed his thumb against his palm when he was scared. Nora became more than an employer. She was the first person in years who treated Elena like her judgment mattered.
Then, one cold November night, the fire alarm failed.
Elena woke to the smell of burning plastic. Smoke rolled under the nursery door. She wrapped Theo in a blanket, pressed a wet towel over his mouth, and carried him down the back stairs while flames climbed the curtains in the hall.
"We're going outside first, sweetheart. I'm coming right back."
At the service door, Elena handed Theo to the gardener and turned back toward Nora's wing. She heard Nora shouting from behind a locked door. Before Elena could reach it, a ceiling beam crashed down between them.
Someone grabbed Elena from behind and dragged her into the courtyard. She fought so hard she tore a sleeve and burned her forearm.
By dawn, Nora was dead, Theo was in the hospital, and Elena was being questioned by police.
Celeste, then the household manager, said Elena had disabled the alarm while stealing Nora's diamond locket. A security camera supposedly showed Elena entering the bedroom. The locket was found in her bag. Elena swore it had not been there before.
Adrian arrived from Chicago, exhausted and broken. He stood outside the hospital room while Celeste explained everything in a soft, sorrowful voice.
"I saved your son," she said. "I went back for Nora. Someone locked that door."
"Please leave," he said.
She left because security was already moving toward her, because Theo was alive, and because she thought one day Adrian would ask the questions she had begged him to ask.
Instead, the case went quiet. Her name was ruined. No family would hire her. No lawyer would take the case without money she did not have.
"I tried to tell you," she said. "But every letter came back unopened."
Celeste stepped between them. "This is a cheap performance. She wants money."
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"You were wearing shiny shoes that night," he said. "I remember because they made a sound outside Mommy's door."
And Adrian finally noticed the silver heels beneath her gown.
