Chapter 3
I removed Ottilie from the ballroom before asking anything else.
She needed pajamas.
Food.
A room with no portrait of a dead child staring at her.
My bodyguard took her upstairs.
She refused to let go of the pendant.
Interesting.
“Why keep it?”
She whispered:
“Aunt Dora said Emily gets to keep it if she’s good.”
There.
Identity rewarded with ownership.
I knelt.
“What do you want to do with it?”
Ottilie thought.
Then pulled the pendant over her head and handed it to me.
“Give dead Emily.”
My throat tightened.
Children simplify things adults corrupt.
I put it in my pocket.
Back downstairs, Rupert was furious.
Not at me.
At Isadora.
“You said four?”
She stared.
“You knew.”
“I knew three.”
A distinction that mattered.
The pattern had grown beyond them individually.
“Who brought June?”
Rupert said nothing.
Isadora looked toward one of the guests.
A woman in navy.
Dr. Elaine Mercer.
Director of St. Agnes.
Of course.
Elaine went pale.
I motioned her forward.
She came slowly.
I asked:
“Did you place June with them?”
“Temporarily.”
“How temporarily?”
“Two weeks.”
“Did you know they were calling her Emily?”
Silence.
That was enough.
Elaine claimed Isadora was grieving and wanted companionship.
June had no immediate placement.
The arrangement seemed harmless.
Then Isadora asked to borrow Emily’s old clothes.
Elaine allowed it.
Then the pendant.
Then she asked June to use Emily’s name “for play.”
Elaine should have stopped it.
She did not.
Why?
Money.
Hawthorne donations supported half the home.
There it was.
Not kidnapping.
Not mystery cult.
A respected institution bending boundaries because wealthy grief paid invoices.
“What happened after two weeks?”
Elaine looked at the floor.
“June refused to answer to Emily anymore.”
“And?”
“Rupert said she was upsetting Isadora.”
“And?”
“We moved her.”
“Where?”
Silence.
I stepped closer.
“Where is June?”
Elaine finally whispered:
“Another family.”
“Which?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared.
“You transferred a six-year-old without knowing where she went?”
“She went through a private sponsor.”
My blood went cold.
“Name.”
Elaine closed her eyes.
“Waverly.”
May you like
My own family name.
Someone inside my house had helped move the first replacement child.
