Chapter 10 - What the Father Knew
Alexander took Naomi to the Whitmore family house, where portraits of ancestors lined a staircase wide enough for three people to walk abreast. Naomi stared at an oil painting of their father. She had imagined a monster. The painting showed a smiling man holding a dog.
“He taught me to sail,” Alexander said. “He remembered my birthday. He also may have paid people to sell children.”
Naomi looked at him. “You’re allowed to miss the father you thought you had. You’re not allowed to protect what he did.”
“I won’t.”
In his father's locked study they found correspondence with Arthur Pike, the St. Agnes administrator. Some letters concerned donations. Others referred to an unfavorable audit and a confidential settlement. One note, written after the fire, read: If the girl survived, Sterling will locate her. Do not contact the boy.
Alexander sat down hard. “He knew you might be alive.”
The betrayal left them speechless until Rosa joined them. She read the note and gripped the desk.
“That’s why he stopped searching,” she said. “He was afraid she could identify Pike.”
A hidden compartment in the desk contained a cassette labeled LUCY, AGE FOUR. Alexander borrowed a player from an antiques shop. The tape began with a child laughing as a man asked her the names of colors. A smaller voice sang the wrong words to a nursery rhyme. Then a door slammed and a woman shouted, “Get those children away from him.”
Naomi could not tell whether she recognized her own voice. She could only feel the echo of something buried too deep for language.
Near the end, the man recording said, “Malcolm, you promised the little girl wouldn’t be involved.”
Another voice replied, unmistakably Malcolm Sterling’s: “There are no promises until the ledger is gone.”
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Alexander found a faded height chart penciled inside the study closet. His own name appeared at nine years old; Lucy's at four. His father had never painted over it, though he'd claimed he couldn't bear reminders. Alexander photographed the chart, ashamed of how badly he still wanted one memory to be innocent.
The tape ended with a sound like furniture being dragged across a floor. In the silence, Rosa whispered one name: “Arthur Pike.”
