Chapter 2 - A Secret Between Grown-Ups
Victor smiled.
“Ah. The cake disaster.”
He entered the kitchen carrying a glass of water. Sixty-two, silver-haired, soft-spoken, he looked more like a retired professor than the second most powerful man in the Cain family.
During my first six days, he had remembered how I took my tea and asked whether my grandmother’s arthritis was improving.
I had thought kindness meant something.
Now I watched his hands.
“Poor boy waited all afternoon for that cake,” Victor said.
“Fortunately, we had cupcakes,” I managed.
His eyes lingered on my face.
“You look pale, June.”
“Flour inhalation. Occupational hazard.”
He glanced at the floor and chuckled.
Adrian did not move.
“Dr. Mercer’s coming,” he told Victor.
“So I heard. Was it someone we know?”
Adrian’s expression changed almost imperceptibly.
“The police are looking into it.”
Something passed across Victor’s face.
It was gone before I could name it.
“Well,” he said. “Let’s hope they’re useful for once.”
A doorbell sounded in the distant entrance hall.
Adrian looked at me.
“Get some sleep. We’ll discuss the kitchen in the morning.”
I understood that he was giving me a way out.
I took it.
Upstairs, I entered my room, shut the door, and stood in the dark with both palms pressed against the wood.
There were practical explanations.
An old recording edited by someone.
A verse written in advance and changed later.
A misunderstanding.
I listed them because the alternative was a missing woman singing about a birthday she should never have known had happened.
Someone knocked softly.
Adrian entered when I opened the door.
His arm was properly dressed now. He carried a small tablet I recognized from Leo’s playroom.
“May I?”
I stepped aside.
He stayed near the doorway.
“I’m going to ask you something, and I need an exact answer. Did Victor tell you about the recording himself?”
“No. Leo did.”
“What were his words?”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“He said his great-uncle let him listen to a new birthday song from his mother.”
“New?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say when?”
“The morning after his birthday.”
Adrian looked down at the tablet.
“Victor told me Leo was settling down because the nightmares were improving.”
I remembered something else.
“Leo asked me not to tell you.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“Why?”
“He said the recording would make you sad.”
For the first time, the man in front of me looked less dangerous than wounded.
I wished I could take the sentence back.
“I didn’t understand,” I said. “I thought perhaps it was something you already knew about but found difficult.”
“I know.”
He sat in the chair beside my desk, leaving distance between us.
“The tablet has no recording.”
“Maybe Victor used his phone.”
“Maybe.”
We listened to the faint hum of the heating system.
Then Adrian said, “Until we understand this, don’t question Victor. Don’t mention the song.”
“What about Leo?”
“We ask him gently. Together. In daylight.”
I looked at the tablet.
“If your sister is alive—”
He lifted his eyes.
I stopped.
Hope could hurt a person. I could see that now. It could make him careless, or desperate, or cruel to anyone who stood between him and an answer.
Adrian seemed aware of it too.
“We don’t tell Leo anything we can’t establish.”
I nodded.
At breakfast, Leo was sleepy and annoyed that his toast had cooled.
Pepper sat beneath his chair, a hopeful brown creature with oversized paws.
Adrian let him finish eating before asking about the song.
Leo’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.
“June told?”
I hated the betrayal in his voice.
“I heard her singing,” Adrian said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Leo looked at me.
I kept my voice soft.
“I didn’t know it was a secret when I sang it.”
He studied us both.
Then his lower lip trembled.
“Uncle Victor said you’d take it away.”
Adrian leaned forward.
“Leo, look at me.”
The child did.
“I would never take your mother’s voice away from you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Leo rubbed his eyes with both fists.
Victor had played it on his own phone. Just once. His mother had sounded tired, but she had laughed in the middle because she forgot a word.
“She said Pepper was trouble,” Leo whispered.
Adrian’s face changed.
Elise could have learned about the puppy from someone.
She could have written about the cake after being told.
But the recording itself was no longer the uncertain memory of an exhausted child.
Leo began singing.
At the end, he added a line I had not heard before.
“Tell your little fox I’m waiting where the bells ring twice.”
Adrian went rigid.
“What bells?”
Leo shrugged.
“The ones in the song.”
May you like
Across the breakfast room, Victor appeared in the doorway.
For the first time since I had met him, he was not smiling.
