Chapter 7
Cora went pale when I asked about Margaret’s call.
“I didn’t know it was her.”
She remembered.
Three months earlier, a woman called the mansion kitchen asking for “the maid who always brings Mr. Hawthorne tea after midnight.”
Cora assumed wrong number.
Hung up.
Margaret called again.
Asked whether Dominic still kept Lily’s blue music box.
That frightened Cora.
Only household staff would know.
She reported the call to Camille.
Of course.
Camille told her it was a disturbed woman exploiting the family’s grief.
Then changed Cora’s duties for two weeks so she no longer answered service calls.
Clean.
Simple.
Cora looked devastated.
“If I had known—”
“No.”
I stopped her.
“That is not yours.”
She looked at me.
“You reported what you heard to the person you believed should know.”
Different from people who knew the truth.
Important.
Then she remembered one detail.
The caller had said:
“Tell him lilies don’t grow underwater.”
Strange sentence.
Margaret’s attempt to signal Lily was alive without saying it outright.
Camille intercepted it.
I laughed once without humor.
Even the truth had been turned into evidence of madness.
Cora then asked something unexpected.
“Why did Miss Camille let Lily come here tonight?”
Good question.
Adrian said transport convenience.
I no longer believed that was the whole reason.
I returned to Camille.
She resisted.
Then admitted.
The concert had a private exit route.
Voss vehicles could enter behind the stage without passing main security.
After the final tribute, Lily was supposed to be moved to a property in Maine.
Farther.
Harder to connect.
“Why Maine?”
Camille’s eyes filled.
“Because Margaret was done.”
Not enough.
“And?”
She looked away.
I understood.
The wedding.
Our wedding was three weeks away.
Once Camille became my wife, every future revelation became even more catastrophic.
So Lily had to disappear deeper before vows.
May you like
The concert was not only memorial theater.
It was the last transfer point before Camille married me over the grave she knew was empty.
