Chapter 3
Lucy found Lila four days earlier.
A ball rolled through the costume room and struck the locked door.
She heard crying.
Then the hatch moved.
Lila whispered.
Lucy answered.
That simple.
Two sisters separated for three years met through a serving hatch because adults built a wall between them.
Lucy began bringing food.
Bread.
Cookies.
Fruit.
Whatever she could hide.
Imogen noticed food missing.
Then caught her.
“What did you do?”
I asked.
Imogen’s face collapsed.
“I told Lucy the girl was sick.”
Lucy immediately said:
“She said bad girl.”
Imogen closed her eyes.
I looked at my daughter.
“Who was bad?”
“She said Lila.”
There.
Villain logic.
Make the hidden child responsible for being hidden.
“What else?”
Lucy looked uncertain.
“Grandma—”
She stopped.
My pulse changed.
“What about Grandma?”
Imogen snapped:
“Enough.”
I turned.
Too late.
Lucy whispered:
“Grandma knows.”
My mother.
Margaret Harrington.
Seventy-one.
Living in Boston.
Supposedly far from this estate.
I looked at Imogen.
“Mother knew?”
Silence.
That was answer enough.
Colin tried to step between us.
I raised one hand.
He stopped.
Good.
“How many people?”
Imogen shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong.”
She cried harder.
“Mother. Colin. Me.”
Three.
Maybe.
I looked toward Lila.
She had finished the bread and was licking crumbs from her palm.
I hated every adult in the room.
“What did you tell her about me?”
Imogen whispered:
“That you weren’t ready.”
Lila looked up at my voice.
“Who’s him?”
I froze.
No one had told my daughter who her father was.
Lucy answered before I could.
“My daddy.”
Lila stared at me.
Then looked at Lucy.
Then back.
“Mine too?”
I could not speak immediately.
That was the first time in my life silence felt like cowardice.
I crouched several feet away.
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled.
“Why didn’t you come?”
There are questions no man can answer without bleeding.
“I didn’t know you were alive.”
She looked at Imogen.
May you like
Then asked the question that changed everything.
“Why did Aunt Imogen say Daddy didn’t want two?”
