Chapter 6
They found the first hidden room behind the linen closet.
A narrow passage ran between the walls.
Old service space from when the house had staff.
Someone had cleaned it.
Modified it.
Added blankets, bottled water, children’s books, and a small nightlight.
Emma had not been there one day.
She had been there for years.
I stood in the hallway with Detective Harris while officers photographed everything.
On one wall, someone had drawn tiny hearts in crayon.
Blue.
Red.
Purple.
Under them were names.
Emma.
Lily.
Rose.
I touched the wall.
My mother had been there.
Detective Harris found a locked metal box beneath the floorboards.
Inside were old cassette tapes.
Medical papers.
A flash drive.
And one letter addressed to me in my mother’s handwriting.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Ryan, if you are reading this, then the wall finally spoke.
I stopped breathing.
My mother wrote that Megan had not abandoned me.
My father had used his connections to have her declared unstable after she discovered his illegal adoption scheme.
Claire helped him.
Megan gave birth to Emma in secret.
My mother hid the baby when my father threatened to take her.
Then came the line that shattered me.
If I die suddenly, do not trust Edward’s grief.
I sat on the floor.
My father had cried at her funeral.
He had held my shoulder.
He had told me grief made people imagine betrayal.
All while my mother had left me a map inside the walls.
Detective Harris inserted the flash drive into an evidence laptop.
A video opened.
My mother sat in Lily’s nursery before Lily was born.
She looked sick.
Terrified.
May you like
“Ryan,” she whispered, “your father is not done taking children.”
Then the screen went black.
