Chapter 4: The Letter and the Name
The handwriting was Genevieve's.
I would have known it anywhere — the slight leftward lean, the way she looped her lowercase g's, the period placed firmly after every sentence as if she were closing a door.
*Lawson.*
*If Nora has found you, then what I feared has already begun.
I am sorry I couldn't finish this myself.
I am sorry for what I'm about to ask you to carry.*
*The twins are in danger from inside your house.
I don't mean a stranger.
I mean someone you trust.
Someone who has been trusted by your family for years.*
*His name is Aldric Vane.*
I stopped reading.
Prescott was on his feet.
"Aldric Vane," he said.
"As in—"
"Crosby Vane's younger brother." I set the letter down.
"Who has managed the estate's domestic operations for the last six years."
Nora watched my face.
"Genevieve found financial records," she said.
"Aldric had been receiving payments from Crosby's holding company.
She didn't know what they were for at first.
Then she started watching what happened in the house.
Small things.
Which staff members Aldric reassigned.
Which contractors he approved without your sign-off.
Which rooms he had quietly modified."
"The filtration system," Prescott said again.
"She believed Crosby wanted leverage over you," Nora said.
"Not to kjll the twins.
To make them sick enough that you'd be desperate.
Desperate men make bad decisions.
They sign things they shouldn't sign.
They trade things they'd never trade when they're thinking clearly."
I stood up.
The letter was still on the table.
I had only read the first page.
"Where is Aldric right now?" I said.
Prescott was already on his phone.
He held up one finger.
Then: "He clocked in at seven this morning.
He's in the estate."
He was in the estate.
He had been in this estate every day for six years.
He had attended Genevieve's funeral.
He had stood at the back of the church with his hands clasped and his head bowed and I had shaken his hand afterward and thanked him for his loyalty.
"Don't touch him," I said.
"Don't move him.
Don't let him know we've spoken."
"Lawson—"
"If we move too fast, Crosby will know.
And if Crosby knows, whatever is in that filtration system gets replaced with something we'll never trace." I picked up the letter and folded it carefully.
"I need Dr.
Yates back in this building tonight.
I need him to test the air in the twins' suite.
Quietly.
Without filing anything."
Prescott nodded and stepped out.
Nora hadn't moved.
"There's a second page," she said.
I looked at her.
"To the letter.
Genevieve wrote two pages.
The second one is harder."
I unfolded the letter again.
*The baby in the photograph is not a stranger's child.
She belongs to someone in your family.
I think you already know who, even if you haven't let yourself think it.
I couldn't tell you while I was alive because I didn't have proof.
Nora has the proof now.
Ask her about the clinic records.
Ask her what name was used for the intake form.*
*I loved you.
I loved our children.
Everything I did in those last months, I did for them.*
*Finish what I started.*
I set the letter down on the table.
"The intake form," I said.
"What name was on it?"
Nora reached into her jacket one final time.
A folded clinic document.
She smoothed it flat on the table and turned it to face me.
May you like
The name on the intake form was not a stranger's.
It was my brother's wife.
