Chapter 4 - What His Mother Knew
Beatrice began crying before anyone accused her.
Silas had seen those tears end arguments for forty years.
This time, Detective Ward asked hospital security to bring them to a private room.
Mallory chose not to attend.
That mattered.
For years, other people had decided which horrors she would be forced to witness.
Today, she went back to bed with Nora.
Beatrice sat with her handbag on her lap.
“I thought it was an intervention.”
Silas stood across from her.
“A funeral was an intervention?”
“Gideon said Mallory had become unstable. He said she was threatening to expose confidential business information.”
“Was she unstable?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you ask her?”
Beatrice looked down.
Ward stopped the exchange.
She explained that further questioning would happen properly, with Beatrice informed of her rights and free to seek counsel.
Silas walked out before he said something that would turn the room into another place ruled by fear.
In the stairwell, he called his attorney.
“Remove my mother’s access to the house and all company systems she’s authorized to use. Preserve everything. Don’t destroy a single message.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know the full answer yet.”
That was becoming the most difficult sentence in his life.
Meanwhile, Mallory told Nora about the first room.
Not all of it.
Just the curtains.
Blue fabric with tiny white flowers.
She had stared at those flowers until she could count them without looking.
“I used to imagine you finding me,” she said.
Nora’s face crumpled.
“Mal—”
“Then I stopped. It hurt too much.”
Nora sat beside her.
“You don’t have to make me feel better about that.”
Mallory studied her sister.
“You learned things.”
“Three years of therapy and an alarming amount of swearing.”
Mallory laughed, then cried because laughter still felt like something she might be punished for.
By evening, investigators located the chapel used in the fake funeral.
It had been rented for a private film production.
A coffin, flowers, hired mourners.
Gideon had arranged the payment through a consulting company.
Beatrice had attended what she later claimed she believed was a therapeutic reenactment.
Her attorney supplied a statement.
Nobody accepted it as the final truth.
Ward returned to Mallory’s room only after Priya asked whether she felt able to hear an update.
“We found where the video was made.”
Mallory gripped the blanket.
“So it wasn’t real.”
“No.”
“I know that. I can see him.”
Her eyes went to Silas.
“But part of me keeps waiting.”
Dr. Moreno nodded.
“Your mind learned something under terrifying circumstances. Knowing the truth and feeling safe with it may happen at different speeds.”
Mallory absorbed that.
“So I’m not broken.”
“No.”
Silas turned away, blinking hard.
Later, she asked him to help her walk down the corridor.
He offered his arm.
She took it.
They moved slowly past vending machines and closed doors.
Nothing dramatic happened.
Nobody appeared with a weapon.
No hidden truth emerged.
For twelve minutes, she was simply a woman walking with her husband.
At the window overlooking the parking lot, she stopped.
“There was another woman.”
Silas waited.
“At Dain’s house. Not Agnes. A younger woman named June.”
“Was she there when we left?”
“I don’t know.”
Mallory turned toward him.
“She helped me hide something.”
“What?”
“I copied names. Payments. Things I heard when they forgot I could understand them.”
“Where are the copies?”
Her breathing changed.
Silas loosened his arm immediately.
“We can stop.”
“No.” She closed her eyes, finding the memory. “The old sewing room. Beneath the machine table.”
Ward was called.
Jonah returned to the estate’s property records.
But when investigators searched the room described by Mallory, the compartment beneath the table was empty.
May you like
And June Herrera was missing.
On Dain’s employment roster, her name had never existed.
