Chapter 15 - THE WOMAN ON THE OTHER SIDE
Rowan woke to the sound of water.
Her head rested against a cold metal wall.
Her wrists were bound in front of her.
The room swayed gently.
She was on a boat.
A narrow window showed black water passing outside.
Night had fallen.
She remembered the memorial.
The explosion.
The screens.
Two women with Elara’s face.
She tried to stand.
Pain spread through her shoulder.
A voice came from the other side of the cabin.
“Do not move too quickly.”
Rowan turned.
Audrey sat on the floor near the door.
Her hands were also tied.
Blood marked the side of her forehead.
“You followed them?” Rowan asked.
“I tried to stop them from taking you.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is Elias?”
“I saw security arrest him.”
“For what?”
“The explosion. The police found the detonator in his case.”
“It was planted.”
“Probably.”
“And Creed?”
“Gone.”
“Escaped?”
“Taken. No one knows by whom.”
Rowan looked through the window.
They were traveling upriver, away from the city.
“Did you see the woman on the stage?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Was she Elara?”
Audrey lowered her eyes.
“She knew something only Elara could know.”
“That does not answer me.”
“When I was ten, Elara gave me a wooden bird. One wing was broken. She said broken things could still remember how to fly.”
Audrey swallowed.
“The woman on the stage whispered that sentence when she passed me.”
Rowan thought of the woman beneath the memorial the night before. She had known Rowan’s childhood habit. She had accused Thomas of starting the fire.
Two women.
Both possessing private memories.
Both claiming connections to Elara.
One appeared beside Creed.
The other appeared beside Miriam.
A key turned in the cabin door.
Rowan and Audrey became silent.
The door opened.
Celia entered carrying a lantern.
The silver bird lantern.
“You,” Rowan said.
Celia closed the door behind her.
“I am sorry about the restraints.”
“Remove them.”
“Not until we reach the island.”
“What island?”
“The place where Conrad kept the patients from the private hospital.”
Audrey’s face changed.
“Elara is there?”
“Someone is.”
Celia knelt and placed the black folder on the floor.
Its edges were burned, but most of the pages remained intact.
“You took Elias’s file,” Rowan said.
“I recovered it after the explosion.”
“Where is Miriam?”
“Waiting.”
“With which Elara?”
Celia gave a tired smile.
“That is the question everyone is finally asking.”
She opened the folder.
The signed authorization page had survived.
Beneath Miriam Hale-Creed’s signature was a faint pressure mark from another sheet.
Celia shaded it with the side of a pencil.
A hidden line appeared.
Authorization transfers upon verified death of the original designer.
Below it was a name.
Not Elara Hale.
Not Elara Creed.
The original designer was listed as Evelyn Rowan Hale.
Rowan stared at her own name.
“That is impossible.”
“The document was signed when you were eight,” Audrey whispered.
“I never signed it.”
Celia turned the page.
A child’s handprint appeared beneath the authorization seal.
Rowan remembered paint on her fingers.
Elara laughing.
A drawing spread across the kitchen table.
Her sister asking her to press her palm onto the paper because someday the city might need proof that two sisters made something together.
“The memorial was legally yours from the beginning,” Celia said. “Elara protected it under your full name.”
“Why did Miriam sign?”
“As guardian.”
“And Creed?”
“He believed the document proved Elara was his daughter and rightful creator. He never knew about the child’s handprint.”
Rowan looked again at the hidden clause.
“Why reveal this now?”
“Because the memorial activated more than an account code.”
Celia removed a small device from her pocket.
It displayed a map of the river.
A blinking signal moved ahead of their boat.
“When the sunlight struck the altered panels, it transmitted a location,” she said.
“To whom?”
“To the one person who possessed the missing section of the ledger.”
“Conrad?”
“No.”
“Miriam?”
“No.”
“Elara?”
Celia did not answer.
The boat slowed.
Through the window, Rowan saw a dark island emerging from the mist.
A single building stood among the trees.
Its upper windows were illuminated.
On the dock waited a woman in a gray coat.
The same coat worn by the figure who escaped from Elara’s locked bedroom.
Rowan rose despite the pain.
The woman stepped beneath a lamp.
She had red hair.
A burn scar crossed her left cheek.
Behind her stood Miriam.
And beside Miriam stood Mayor Creed, bound to a chair.
Audrey moved toward the window.
“Is that the woman from the stage?”
“No,” Rowan whispered.
It was the woman from the memorial construction site.
The one who had warned her.
The boat reached the dock.
Celia unlocked Audrey’s restraints, then Rowan’s.
“Before you meet her,” Celia said, “you need to understand one thing.”
“What?”
“Conrad did not keep Elara in the hospital to punish her.”
The cabin door opened.
Cold mist entered.
“He kept her there because after the fire, she could no longer remember which of the Hale sisters she was.”
Rowan looked toward the woman waiting on the dock.
Miriam began to cry.
The red-haired woman lifted a familiar silver bracelet.
Then she spoke in a voice almost identical to Rowan’s own.
“I know you came here looking for Elara,” she said.
“But Elara Hale never existed.”
Behind her, lights came on throughout the island facility.
Dozens of doors unlocked at once.
Figures began emerging into the night.
Each one wore a silver bracelet.
And from somewhere deep inside the building, a child began singing the song that decoded the memorial.
The same song Rowan’s father had whistled every night.
May you like
The same song Audrey remembered from the tunnel.
The same song that now ended with an eighth note neither of them had ever heard before.
