Chapter 1
“She has my face, Daddy.”
The little hand stayed beneath the door.
Small fingers.
Pale.
Shaking.
I stopped breathing.
Three years earlier, I had held one newborn daughter in my arms while a doctor told me her twin sister had died before I could see her.
No funeral I attended.
No tiny face.
Only a closed box.
A story.
And grief.
Now Lucy was pointing toward a locked room and telling me another child looked exactly like her.
Imogen still had one arm pinned against the wardrobe beside me.
Her face had gone white.
That mattered.
I let go of her only long enough to take the key from the hook.
She lunged.
“Luca, don’t.”
Wrong sentence.
I looked at her.
“Why not?”
No answer.
Colin pushed himself upright from the fallen coats.
“Because what’s inside isn’t your concern.”
I turned toward him slowly.
My concern?
The hand disappeared beneath the hatch.
Then a little voice whispered from the other side.
“Lucy?”
My daughter started crying.
“I’m here.”
The voice answered:
“Bread?”
Something inside me broke.
Not loudly.
Coldly.
Lucy had been feeding her.
That was why Imogen took the roll.
Not discipline.
Containment.
I unlocked the door.
Imogen screamed:
“Luca!”
I opened it.
The room beyond had no windows.
One cot.
One blanket.
One small table.
And a little girl sitting barefoot beside the wall.
Same age.
Same eyes.
Same chin.
Same small dimple beside the mouth.
She looked at Lucy.
Then at me.
Her face changed with terror.
I knew that face.
Because I had seen it every morning for three years.
Only once.
Until now.
Lucy whispered:
“Daddy, that’s her.”
I stepped inside.
The child pressed against the wall.
“What’s your name?”
She looked toward Imogen.
Not me.
That told me who had been deciding whether she was allowed to answer.
Finally:
“Lila.”
My knees almost gave out.
Lila.
That was the name my late wife and I chose for Lucy’s twin before the birth.
The daughter I had been told was dead.
May you like
Alive.
Locked inside my house.
