Chapter 6 - the child between them
Sabrina was taken to a secured guest room while Naomi contacted the district attorney.
Evan expected Leah to demand answers.
Instead, she asked for somewhere quiet where Ellie could sleep.
The child had survived shouting, shattered glass and the collapse of a wedding. She had not cried again, but her silence frightened Leah more.
Evan led them upstairs to the room that had once belonged to him.
Old hockey photographs still lined one wall. A wooden chest held jerseys, medals and childhood books.
Ellie wandered toward a framed picture of Evan at age five.
She looked at it for several seconds.
“That’s me,” she said.
Despite everything, Leah laughed softly.
“No, sweetheart. That’s Evan when he was little.”
Ellie glanced between the photograph and Evan.
“We have the same face.”
Evan crouched beside her.
“A little.”
“And the same chin.”
“Yes.”
“Mommy said you didn’t know.”
Evan’s throat tightened.
“She was right.”
Ellie considered that.
“Do you know now?”
He could have waited for another DNA test.
He could have protected himself with careful words.
Instead, he looked into the gray eyes that mirrored his own.
“I know I should have found you.”
Ellie touched the scar beneath his chin.
“I got mine from falling off a chair.”
“I got mine from trying to jump over a sofa.”
“Did it work?”
“No.”
She smiled for the first time.
Leah watched them from the doorway.
Evan stood.
“Can we talk?”
They stepped into the corridor while Ellie explored the chest with Margaret.
Evan closed the door halfway.
“I remember pieces of you.”
Leah folded her arms around herself.
“That must be confusing.”
“The clinic. Your kitchen. A ring.”
Her eyes moved to the chain beneath her collar.
Evan noticed.
“You still have it?”
“No.”
She pulled the chain free.
A small brass key hung from it.
“Your father had someone steal the ring.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You did not do it.”
“I also didn’t stop it.”
“You were unconscious.”
“Afterward, I let my father decide which version of the past was true.”
“You searched for me.”
“How do you know?”
“Victor told me.”
Evan frowned.
“When?”
“Two months before he died.”
Leah had never told anyone about the meeting.
Victor appeared outside the rehabilitation center where she worked. He looked older than the man who had threatened her four years earlier.
He asked to see Ellie.
Leah refused.
He did not argue.
Instead, he gave her the brass key now hanging from her neck.
“He said it opened something beneath the floor of the lake house,” Leah explained. “He told me that if anything happened to him, I should wait until your wedding day.”
“Why?”
“He said Sabrina would reveal herself when she believed she had won.”
Evan looked toward the stairs.
“And you trusted him?”
“No. But two weeks later, someone followed Ellie home from preschool.”
His expression hardened.
“Why didn’t you contact the police?”
“I did. They found nothing.”
“Why didn’t you contact me directly?”
“I drove to your office.”
Evan remembered none of it.
“Sabrina met me in the lobby,” Leah continued. “She said you knew about Ellie and wanted a private test before speaking to me. She arranged for a nurse to collect samples.”
“The report in the envelope.”
“I never received the result. Sabrina told me it was negative.”
Evan closed his eyes.
She had not merely hidden messages.
She had stood in front of Leah with proof and lied.
“I should have known what she was capable of.”
“She was there when you were injured. You trusted her.”
“I almost married her.”
Leah’s expression softened, but only slightly.
“You cannot rebuild four missing years by punishing yourself for them.”
“Then how do I rebuild them?”
“One day at a time.”
Evan looked through the open door.
Ellie had found one of his childhood hockey helmets and placed it backward on her head.
“Does she know who I am?”
“She knows you played hockey. She calls you the television man.”
“I meant what kind of father she thinks I am.”
Leah’s gaze dropped.
“She thinks you are a good one who got lost.”
The answer nearly broke him.
Before Evan could respond, Naomi appeared at the top of the stairs.
“We found something in Victor’s video.”
They returned to the security room.
The technician had enhanced the final frames.
The shadow behind Victor belonged to a tall man. His face remained hidden, but he wore a distinctive signet ring.
Margaret recognized it.
“That belonged to Roland Vale.”
“Sabrina’s grandfather?” Daniel asked.
“He gave it to his son, Jonathan.”
Sabrina’s father.
Evan looked toward the secured guest room.
“Where is Jonathan now?”
“At the wedding,” Margaret said.
Daniel checked the guest list.
Jonathan Vale had entered the mansion at 1:18 p.m.
There was no record of him leaving.
Naomi ordered a search of the property.
They found his tuxedo jacket folded in a service corridor and his phone submerged in a fountain.
The mansion’s east garage was missing one vehicle.
Victor’s black sedan.
The same car that had entered with Dr. Voss’s access code had been switched before arriving.
Someone had brought Voss to the mansion and then taken the vehicle again.
At 7:40 p.m., the mansion received a call.
Evan answered on speaker.
Jonathan Vale’s voice filled the room.
“Bring Sabrina to the lake house at midnight.”
“Why?”
“Because she has something that belongs to me.”
Sabrina, listening from the doorway under guard, shook her head.
“I don’t.”
Jonathan laughed.
“Check the hem of your wedding dress.”
Naomi searched the gown.
Sewn beneath the lace was a small black key card.
Sabrina stared at it in horror.
“I have never seen that.”
Jonathan’s voice became colder.
“Victor put it there before he died.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing about Victor’s death is what you think.”
Evan gripped the phone.
“What does the card open?”
Jonathan answered with five words.
May you like
“The grave beneath the lake.”
Then the call ended.
