Chapter 4
The red cabin belonged to an old woodworker named Samuel Pike.
Seventy-three.
He had repaired furniture for the Bellacorte lodge since before Mark was born.
I knew him.
Barely.
Apparently that was another problem.
My world contained people I recognized without truly seeing.
Samuel arrived before midnight after my men found him near the lower workshop.
He took one look at the airplane and sighed.
“So he got it to you.”
I held the toy.
“You helped?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
He looked at Mark.
Then me.
“Evelyn.”
There.
No hesitation.
Samuel had known she was alive for seven months.
She rented his red guest cabin after returning to Colorado.
Paid cash from money she earned restoring furniture for nearby resorts.
Nothing Bellacorte.
Nothing from Mark.
“Why come back?”
“To see her boy.”
Mark laughed harshly.
“She could have knocked on the door.”
Samuel looked at him.
“She did.”
Silence.
June third.
Evelyn came to the lodge gate.
Mark met her before anyone called me.
He told her Noah no longer remembered her.
That seeing her would confuse him.
That I agreed.
My stomach turned.
I had known nothing.
She returned twice.
Same answer.
Then she wrote.
No response.
Then Samuel, who occasionally delivered repaired furniture to the lodge, began carrying simple notes from Evelyn to one of Noah’s nannies.
Not asking to take him.
Only photographs.
Updates.
A chance to see him from a distance.
One nanny finally allowed a brief meeting at a public winter market in September.
Mark discovered it.
Fired her.
That explained why Noah’s longtime nanny disappeared from staff overnight.
I had been told she moved to Arizona for family.
Another lie.
Samuel continued.
Evelyn did not tell Noah she was his mother.
She believed that decision had to be handled carefully after so much time.
She introduced herself as Evie.
Spent three short visits with him.
During the last one, Noah said my birthday was coming.
He wanted to make me something.
Evelyn helped him carve the airplane.
Nothing hidden.
No message.
No trap.
Just a gift from grandson to grandfather.
I looked at Mark.
“You punished him for bringing me something his mother touched.”
He snapped:
“She was trying to use him to get back into this family.”
Samuel shook his head.
“No.”
Then:
May you like
“She was trying to get back to her son.”
Mark had spent so long treating those as the same thing he no longer knew the difference.
