Chapter 3 - The Locked Guest Room
Before the footsteps reached them, Lucy showed Adrian the bruised corner of a library card. Margaret had signed the back in blue ink, with instructions that the girl could borrow any book she wanted from the upstairs shelves. Adrian recognized the familiar loops in his mother's signature. He remembered her telling him that a child shouldn't have to earn permission to learn.
“Why didn't you come to me?” he asked Lucy.
“Mrs. Vale said you didn't like children in the house. She said you'd call somebody to take us away.”
Adrian felt something inside him fall apart. He had been absent so often that a stranger could convincingly turn his name into a threat. He couldn't undo that in one conversation. He could start by staying.
“I won't let anyone make a decision about you without explaining it,” he said. “And you can ask me questions. Even angry ones.”
Lucy regarded him with the serious suspicion of a child who had learned that promises were cheap. “What if I don't believe you?”
“Then I'll have to show you.”
Adrian caught Celeste at the first landing. “Where are you going?”
“To call my attorney. You've humiliated me in front of an employee.”
“Your attorney can wait.”
He passed her and took the narrow east staircase two steps at a time. Mateo followed despite Celeste's furious order to stay downstairs.
The north guest room had been sealed since Margaret's death. Its brass lock was new. Adrian used his master key. It wouldn't turn.
“Someone changed it,” he said.
Mateo produced a small maintenance ring. “Mrs. Blackthorn made me promise to keep a copy of every old room key.”
“Then she was smarter than I was.”
They used a service access door behind the linen closet. Adrian pushed inside and smelled lavender, cold dust, and fresh paint. Most of the furniture was shrouded. On the wall where his mother's favorite watercolor had hung, a pale rectangle showed its outline.
Mateo crouched by an old radiator. “She kept her papers in here when she was afraid someone searched her desk.”
“Who was searching?”
“I never saw their faces.”
A soft noise came from the wardrobe.
Adrian pulled it open. A young girl, perhaps thirteen, stood pressed against the back panel. She wore a blue sweatshirt, and her eyes were wide with terror.
“Don't send me back,” she whispered.
Adrian crouched so they were at eye level. “I'm Adrian. What's your name?”
“Lucy.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. But they took my brother.”
Mateo grabbed the doorframe. “Lucy?”
The girl turned and recognized him. “Mr. Reyes!” She ran into his arms.
Adrian had never seen her before. “You know each other?”
“Her mother worked in the gardens,” Mateo said quietly. “She disappeared last winter.”
“Disappeared how?”
Lucy shook with a fury too old for her face. “They said she left town. Then I heard Mrs. Vale tell someone to burn the letters.”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Mateo pushed the wardrobe closed around Lucy just as Celeste entered with a broad-shouldered man in a charcoal coat.
Adrian recognized him: Martin Keene, his mother's former estate lawyer.
Keene smiled without warmth. “Adrian, we need to discuss a very serious misunderstanding.”
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From inside the wardrobe came a second, quieter voice—a boy's voice through a phone speaker.
“Lucy, they're coming back.”
