Chapter 2 - Eighteen Years
Claire let Margaret’s call ring until it stopped.
Then it started again.
Daniel watched her.
“You should answer.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“No.”
Emma stood between them, frightened and confused.
“Who’s Sophie?”
Claire pressed both hands against the counter.
She had spent eighteen years avoiding that question, even in her own mind.
“Sophie was nine when I last saw her.”
Emma’s eyes widened.
“My age.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Claire remembered a summer night.
Her mother shouting downstairs.
Her father loading a suitcase into the car.
Little Sophie clutching Snowdrop.
Claire standing at the top of the staircase in her pajamas.
Sophie crying.
“Claire, come with us.”
Then Margaret pulling Claire backward.
Her father shouting something Claire could no longer remember clearly.
By morning, Peter Mercer and Sophie were gone.
Margaret said Peter had kidnapped Sophie.
Police came.
Lawyers came.
Reporters came.
Then everything went quiet.
Peter was never prosecuted.
Claire was told he had fled the country.
The family moved away.
Hawthorne House was closed.
Claire never saw her sister again.
Until perhaps now.
“There was a custody dispute,” Claire told Emma.
Daniel looked at her sharply.
“You told me you were an only child.”
Claire flinched.
“I told you what my mother told everyone later.”
“That your father left.”
“He did.”
“With Sophie.”
“That’s what I believed.”
Daniel glanced toward the abandoned house.
“And now?”
Claire’s phone rang again.
Margaret.
This time Claire answered.
“Mom.”
Margaret Voss’s voice came immediately.
“Do not go inside that house.”
Claire froze.
Daniel heard enough to step closer.
“How do you know what I’m looking at?”
Silence.
Then Margaret said, “Claire, listen to me carefully.”
“No. You listen to me. There is a child in Hawthorne House.”
Another silence.
“And she has Snowdrop.”
Margaret inhaled sharply.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“You gave it to Emma.”
“I gave her a rabbit.”
“You gave her Sophie’s rabbit.”
Margaret’s tone hardened.
“Stay out of that house.”
“Why?”
“Because nothing good is waiting there.”
Claire looked across the rain-dark street.
“Is Sophie alive?”
The question hung between them.
Margaret did not answer.
Claire whispered, “Mom?”
“Lock your doors.”
The call ended.
Daniel grabbed his coat.
“What are you doing?”
“Going across.”
Claire blocked him.
“No.”
“Someone has our daughter’s toy.”
“Daniel, my mother knew.”
“That makes me want to go more.”
Emma looked out the window again.
The upstairs glass was empty.
Then headlights swept across Hawthorne House.
A black SUV slowed at the curb.
It did not stop.
The driver’s face was hidden behind rain and tinted glass.
Daniel watched it pass.
“Did you recognize that car?”
Claire shook her head.
But Daniel had.
She saw it.
“Daniel.”
He turned away.
“What?”
“You know something.”
“No.”
“You just reacted.”
“To what?”
“That SUV.”
Daniel stared at her for a long moment.
“It looked like Victor Hale’s.”
Claire felt another old name strike her.
Victor Hale had been her mother’s attorney for most of Claire’s childhood.
He had also handled Peter Mercer’s disappearance.
“Why would Victor be here?”
Daniel said nothing.
Claire stepped closer.
“Daniel.”
“I’ve done property work for him.”
“What property work?”
“It’s complicated.”
“On Hawthorne House?”
His silence answered her.
Claire backed away.
“You knew something about that house?”
“I knew there were title problems.”
“How long?”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“Three years.”
Claire stared at him.
“You’ve known for three years that my family had unfinished business across the street?”
“I didn’t know about Sophie.”
“But you knew the property was connected to my mother.”
“Yes.”
Emma whispered, “Dad?”
Neither answered.
Daniel finally said, “There’s a trust attached to the property.”
Claire felt cold.
“What trust?”
“The Hawthorne Family Trust.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“I know.”
“Who owns it?”
Daniel looked toward the dark house.
“That’s the problem.”
“What problem?”
“According to the oldest recorded documents, Hawthorne House was never solely your mother’s.”
Claire’s heartbeat accelerated.
“Whose was it?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Half belonged to you.”
Claire stared.
“And the other half?”
Daniel’s expression told her before he spoke.
“Sophie.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Eighteen years.
A vanished sister.
A stolen rabbit.
A house her mother had never told her she owned.
Claire grabbed her coat.
Daniel caught her wrist.
“Where are you going?”
“To find out why a nine-year-old girl is standing inside my sister’s house.”
Outside, the rain intensified.
May you like
And across the street, for just an instant, a light turned on upstairs.
Blue.
