Chapter 4 - THE MAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
For several seconds, I couldn't move.
The one in Grandpa's picture.
I kept hearing Felicity's words.
Not the money.
Not the watch.
The child.
I stepped into the hallway.
Rachael was waiting.
“How is she?”
“She said there were two men.”
Rachael covered her mouth.
“Evan?”
“No.”
She looked confused.
“She said one claimed Evan sent him.”
Hale immediately stood.
“What else?”
“They were looking for a child in a photograph.”
Rachael's face changed.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
“You know.”
She shook her head.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“You recognized it.”
“I remembered something.”
“What?”
“My father had a photograph.”
“Of what?”
“A little boy.”
I stared at her.
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
Hale stepped closer.
“Mrs. Bennett, start from the beginning.”
Rachael sat down.
“When I was nineteen, my father brought home a photograph. He was furious.”
“Why?”
“He said someone had betrayed him.”
“Who?”
“Marianne.”
She pointed to the photograph from earlier.
“His assistant.”
“What was in the photograph?”
“A child.”
“How old?”
“Maybe four.”
“And your father knew him?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don't know.”
Rachael looked toward Felicity's room.
“But I remember one thing.”
“What?”
“My father told me never to let Evan see that photograph.”
Hale exchanged a glance with me.
“So Evan knew about it.”
“Yes.”
“Did he know where it was?”
“I don't know.”
“Did your father ever tell you?”
“No.”
I remembered the drawing.
The house.
The sun.
The child.
I pulled out the photograph Hale had taken from the evidence folder.
“Your father gave Felicity this?”
Rachael stared at it.
“I've never seen that drawing.”
“But someone wrote on it.”
She touched the paper.
Her fingers stopped.
“That's my father's handwriting.”
The room went silent.
“Are you sure?”
“I'd know it anywhere.”
Hale took a photograph of the writing.
“Then your father expected someone to find this.”
Rachael shook her head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he died fifteen years ago.”
I looked at her.
“So whatever he hid has been waiting fifteen years.”
That evening, detectives searched the house again.
They focused on Felicity's room.
I stayed beside my daughter.
She was awake now.
Barely.
But awake.
I sat in the chair beside her bed.
“You scared me.”
She gave me the smallest smile.
“Sorry.”
“Don't apologize.”
“I ruined my birthday.”
I looked at her.
“You're sixteen.”
“So?”
“So birthdays are allowed to be terrible.”
She almost smiled.
Then her expression changed.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you find the watch?”
“Yes.”
“Don't give it to anyone.”
“Why?”
“Because the man said it opens something.”
“What?”
“I don't know.”
She looked toward the window.
“Grandpa showed me once.”
“What did he show you?”
“A box.”
My heart tightened.
“What kind of box?”
“Wood.”
“Where?”
“I don't remember.”
She frowned.
“Maybe I was little.”
“Did Grandpa say anything?”
“He said…”
She closed her eyes.
I waited.
“He said some things are safer when people think they're lost.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Later that night, Detective Hale returned.
He carried a new report.
“We found a partial print on the alarm panel.”
“Evan?”
“No.”
“Then whose?”
“We don't know yet.”
He sat down.
“But we found something else.”
He placed a photograph in front of me.
The old landscape painting from the photograph.
It had been hidden behind a stack of boxes in the attic.
Behind the frame was a narrow metal compartment.
Empty.
Except for a small brass key.
I picked it up.
There was an engraving.
My pulse quickened.
“The watch stopped at 4:17.”
Hale nodded.
“Exactly.”
Rachael stared at the key.
“I've never seen it.”
I looked at the photograph again.
The child stood beside Robert Mercer.
Behind them was the painting.
But now I noticed something else.
The boy was wearing a small necklace.
A round silver pendant.
Hale zoomed in.
The pendant looked familiar.
Not because I had seen it on the child.
Because I had seen it somewhere else.
On Felicity.
She wore a necklace every day.
A small silver circle.
Her mother had given it to her when she was eleven.
I had never questioned it.
I suddenly stood.
“Where is Felicity's necklace?”
Rachael looked at me.
“She always wears it.”
I went into her room.
The necklace wasn't around her neck.
It wasn't on the bedside table.
I searched the drawer.
Nothing.
Then I remembered the photograph.
The pendant.
The same shape.
I returned to the hallway.
“Someone took her necklace.”
Hale's expression hardened.
“Then whoever attacked her wasn't only searching for the watch.”
We found the necklace three hours later.
Not in the house.
In the hospital laundry bin.
Wrapped inside a torn piece of blue fabric.
Someone had deliberately hidden it.
Hale held it under the light.
The pendant opened.
Inside was a tiny photograph.
A young woman holding a baby.
On the back was one word.
MARIANNE.
Rachael stared at it.
Then whispered,
“That isn't Marianne.”
I looked at her.
“Who is it?”
She swallowed.
“I don't know.”
Hale turned the photograph over again.
There was another marking beneath the name.
A date.
Sixteen years ago.
The year Felicity was born.
Rachael stepped backward.
“No.”
“What?”
She looked at the baby.
Then at Felicity's hospital room.
“My father died fifteen years ago.”
“Yes.”
“He couldn't have known about this.”
“Unless he did.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
Then she pointed at the photograph.
“That woman…”
Her voice broke.
“…that's my father's wife.”
I stared at her.
“Your mother?”
“No.”
Rachael looked at me.
“She wasn't my mother.”
She lowered her voice.
May you like
“She was Evan's mother.”
And suddenly the entire story changed.
