Chapter 5 - The Name We Buried

Nobody in my house said Camille's name unless we were standing at her grave.

She had been sixteen when Pier Nine burned. I was twenty-one, full of stupid confidence, and sure my father could fix anything. He couldn't fix the sight of a little silver bracelet laid on the kitchen table after they found her.

"Why did Ma say her name?" I asked Elena.

"Maybe the chest belonged to her."

It did. Camille had painted tiny yellow birds on the drawer pulls the summer before she died. My mother couldn't bear to throw it away.

I questioned the staff. The house manager, Mrs. Pell, swore the chest had been moved for cleaning. Nobody knew where. Victor's crew controlled the service elevators.

I called him.

"Find it."

"You need to stop chasing old furniture."

"Find. It."

He hung up.

Elena was watching my mother make a line on a notebook page. The stroke of the pencil trembled like a bridge in bad weather.

"Don't rush," Elena whispered. "You have all the time I can give you."

My mother wrote C, then M, then pushed the paper away. After a minute she touched the first letter and pointed to my chest.

"Camille?" I asked.

Her head moved a fraction. No.

"Something else beginning with C?"

She tapped twice, tired and furious.

I took a step back, and Elena held up her hand.

"She's not a suspect. Don't interrogate her."

"I'm trying to understand."

"Then let her choose how she speaks."

I left them alone and went to the basement workshop. My father's old handyman had kept photographs of the house from renovation years. In one, the chest stood beside Camille's piano. A piece of paper protruded from a drawer. On it was a child's drawing of a yellow bird and the word MARIGOLD.

Camille called every stray animal Marigold, even the boys. That was the kind of sister she had been.

I remembered a brass plate behind the drawer that she used to hide candy from my father. If the chest was gone, whoever took it might know about that compartment.

My phone vibrated with a blocked-number message.

STOP ASKING ABOUT PIER NINE OR YOUR MOTHER WILL GO BACK TO THE HOSPITAL.

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Under it came a photograph taken seconds earlier: Elena sitting beside my mother's bed.

Someone was still watching them.