Chapter 13
My mother continued.
“There is a photograph hidden beneath the inner lining. You must not open it until you are somewhere safe. Once you see the child in that picture, you will understand why I changed your name.”
The recording crackled.
A door seemed to close in the background.
Then my mother whispered one final sentence.
“And Hannah, Sofia Moretti did not disappear.”
The tape stopped.
The room was silent except for the fire.
Victor’s hand rested on the desk.
His knuckles had gone white.
I looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
He did not answer.
“Victor.”
“My sister has been missing for twenty-four years.”
“My mother said she didn’t disappear.”
“I heard her.”
“Then what happened to her?”
He stared at the recorder as though it might speak again.
“I don’t know.”
I pulled the locket from beneath Lily’s blanket when we returned downstairs.
The doctor objected at first, worried the movement would wake her, but Lily only sighed and turned her head against the cushion.
Victor brought a set of delicate tools.
My hands trembled too badly to use them.
“You open it,” I said.
He hesitated.
“Please.”
He worked carefully, sliding the narrow tip of a tool beneath the locket’s faded velvet lining. The fabric lifted without tearing.
Beneath it was a folded square of thin paper.
Not a photograph.
A note.
Victor unfolded it.
There were only three lines.
The photograph is with the woman who remembers the blue room.
May you like
Ask Hannah why she stopped drawing stars.
Do not trust the name Vale.
