Chapter 4 - FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
The footprints began at the greenhouse wall and ended at the servants' entrance. They were narrow, probably made by women's boots, and the snow had only started settling on their edges. Lucian watched an independent investigator photograph them while a uniformed officer measured the distance between each step. He would have preferred to follow the tracks himself. June reminded him that doing so would turn a useful scene into a confused one.
Faye stayed beside the nursery door. Rosie had woken crying, convinced the woman in the blue scarf would take her away. No one could tell whether the frightened child's dream and the tracks were connected. Still, Faye noticed a detail that unsettled her: the outside window latch had been loosened, and the blue thread looked like the same silk fringe she had seen near the greenhouse corridor.
"Did somebody enter the nursery?" she asked.
"We don't know," Lucian answered. "And we're not going to tell Rosie something we can't prove."
He moved her and Marta into an upstairs guest suite while the specialists checked the windows. It was a simple room with a bright blue bedspread. Rosie chose it because the curtains had little yellow stars. She climbed into Faye's lap and asked if the new door could lock from the inside.
"It can," Faye said, "but grown-ups need to be able to reach you in an emergency. We'll make a safe plan together."
Rosie considered this and asked for a night-light shaped like the moon. Lucian promised to find one before bedtime.
In the library, June had other news. The charity documents recovered from Margaret Voss contained transfers to three properties, one in New Jersey, one in Pennsylvania, and one near the Connecticut coast. The coastal address belonged to a private rehabilitation center known as Briar House, nominally used for clients requiring residential medical care.
"The place is under investigation for irregular licensing," June explained. "It appears in a civil complaint from last spring. Two former residents said they were prevented from contacting their families."
Lucian thought of Rosie locked beneath the floor. The idea of people being restrained behind respectable walls made his blood go cold. "Can we get someone there?"
"An investigator is checking. We can't simply enter a licensed facility because an address appears in paperwork."
He nearly argued, then stopped. He had spent years behaving as though urgency gave him authority over anyone in his way. Elena had called it the flaw that would eventually destroy him.
"Do it properly," he said.
June looked relieved, though she tried to hide it.
By afternoon, the house was almost empty of guests and staff. Several employees requested time away after learning what happened to Rosie. Lucian approved every request with pay. Then he gathered the remaining workers in the breakfast room, far from the locked hatch.
"I failed to provide a safe workplace," he told them. "An employee was threatened for reporting a danger to a child. No one here is required to keep quiet about abuse, neglect, or criminal conduct. An independent hotline will take concerns from now on, and retaliation will be investigated."
Some of them stared at him as though he were speaking a foreign language. Lucian understood. A promise from a man known for intimidation did not suddenly make his home safe. He would have to prove it with actions.
Afterward, a young dishwasher named Owen approached Faye near the pantry. He kept checking behind him. "I heard you found the little girl," he said.
"Yes."
"I wanted to tell someone something. On Christmas morning, Mr. Rourke told me to move two crates from the cellar corridor. One had medical equipment labels. The other had children's clothes. He said they belonged to a charity pickup."
Faye asked whether he would speak with the investigators. Owen hesitated. He had a probationary job and a newborn daughter. She didn't pressure him. Instead, she introduced him to June, who explained the reporting options and helped arrange legal advice. It took him nearly an hour to agree to a recorded statement.
Lucian watched the exchange from the doorway. Faye was not trying to turn herself into a hero. She was making sure another vulnerable employee could decide for himself.
That evening, a former cook arrived carrying a shoebox. Her name was Dolores Finch, and she had worked for Elena before Isabel persuaded Daniel to dismiss her. Her gray hair was pinned tightly, but her voice had the edge of someone who'd spent too long swallowing resentment.
"Elena asked me to keep this if something happened," Dolores said. "I didn't believe she was in danger until the funeral. And then Daniel told me I'd be sued if I opened my mouth."
Inside the box were postcards, shopping receipts, and a small notebook. June carefully inventoried them. The notebook contained appointments under initials rather than names. Some matched dates in Margaret's ledger. Others included a symbol Lucian recognized from the recovered key: a tiny M beneath a raven silhouette.
"Elena used that sign with Rosie," he said. "She said it meant coming home."
Dolores sat down heavily. "She told me if a woman ever came to the kitchen asking for a red ribbon, I was to send her away. She said that woman couldn't be trusted."
"What woman?" June asked.
"I never saw her. But two weeks before the crash, Elena was frightened. She wouldn't let anyone else feed Rosie. She checked the locks herself. And she kept asking whether Lucian was finally home."
Lucian looked away. He had been in Miami, settling a dispute with a rival organization. He remembered Elena calling three times. He had answered the first and told her he'd call back. He never did.
For a while nobody spoke. Faye thought of the conversations she herself had postponed with family members, assuming there would always be another afternoon.
Dolores opened one of the postcards. It depicted a lighthouse on the Connecticut shore. Across the back Elena had written: THE WOMAN WITH MY FACE KNOWS WHERE THE MONEY WENT.
Lucian read it twice. "The woman with my face?"
June said, "It could be figurative. An impersonator, a relative, someone wearing her clothing. We shouldn't build a conclusion from one sentence."
But Dolores looked strangely pale. "Elena had a sister," she said.
Lucian turned. "No. She was an only child."
"That's what her family told people. But I found an old photograph once. Two little girls, exactly alike, holding hands outside a farmhouse. Elena took it from me so quickly I thought I'd broken something. She said the other girl was no longer part of her life."
"A twin?" Faye asked.
"I don't know." Dolores rubbed her palms together. "I only know what I saw."
The possibility seemed absurd, and Lucian refused to accept it without proof. He had been married to Elena for five years. Surely he would have known whether she had a twin. Yet he remembered moments when she spoke of her childhood as though she were crossing a field full of concealed holes.
Rosie padded into the room, a stuffed bear hanging from one hand. Marta followed closely. "She wanted Daddy," she explained.
Lucian lifted Rosie onto his lap. She noticed the lighthouse postcard and tapped the picture.
"Mommy place," she said.
"Did you go there with Mommy?" he asked.
Rosie nodded. "Boat. White house. Other Mommy."
June intervened gently. "Lucian, don't ask her leading questions. Children sometimes combine memories and stories. We can let a trained interviewer speak with her if necessary."
He agreed. Still, the words lodged in his mind.
Later that night, Lucian received a secure call from the investigator assigned to Briar House. A state inspection team had arrived to review licensing records. The administrator claimed that all residents were accounted for, but one woman's file had been transferred that morning to an unknown private provider.
"What name was on the file?" Lucian asked.
"It was redacted. We only know the patient had been admitted two years ago, after a traumatic incident, and had no listed next of kin."
"What kind of traumatic incident?"
"A motor vehicle collision."
Lucian's fingers tightened around the phone. "Does this prove anything?"
"No. But the referral date matches your wife's accident. We're asking a judge for the underlying records."
The investigator ended the call. Lucian looked at the lighthouse postcard, then the family portrait above the mantel. He had spent two years mourning the woman in that photograph. If someone had impersonated Elena, he needed to know who. If she had survived, he could not imagine what she might have endured. Both thoughts hurt.
Faye came to the doorway. "Rosie's asleep."
He nodded. "Thank you."
She noticed the postcard and the expression on his face. "You look like somebody handed you hope and then told you it might be a trap."
"That's exactly how it feels."
"Then don't chase the hope alone," she said. "Let people check the facts."
He looked at her, surprised by the simplicity of the advice. A moment later, the house phone rang. An unfamiliar man said only, "Tell Lucian Hale to stop searching for a woman who's already been buried."
May you like
Then he added, almost conversationally, "Unless he wants his daughter to be buried too."
The call ended. Lucian immediately passed the recording to the investigators. Afterward he stood in the empty library, hearing the threat echo against the shelves. It was not proof of Elena's fate. But it was proof that somebody feared what his search might uncover.
