Chapter 3 - THE ROOM WITHOUT WINDOWS
I had spent forty years being called ruthless. Nothing in those years prepared me for the sight of a child's fingerprints on the inside of a locked cellar door.
Rosa led us down a servants' stairwell. Theo stayed near the police while I followed the housekeeper, still holding Maya. The air turned damp and cold.
Behind a utility room was a narrow storage space with no window. A folded blanket lay on the floor beside a plastic cup and one stuffed rabbit missing an ear.
"This is where you put her?" I asked Vanessa, who had followed us despite the officer's warning.
"She needed consequences. She's spoiled."
Maya whispered, "It gets dark."
I felt something hard and ugly rise in my throat. "You will never be put here again," I told her.
Vanessa rolled her eyes. "Children exaggerate."
"So do adults who think money makes them untouchable."
The officer photographed the room. A paramedic examined Maya's wrist and advised a hospital evaluation. I agreed immediately.
As we prepared to leave, Maya tugged on my brooch. It was an old platinum hawk, the emblem my husband had given me after our first difficult year in business.
"Daddy says bird people are bad," she whispered.
I went still. "When did Daddy say that?"
"When he came to my window."
Rosa looked at me sharply. "Maya has said things like that before. Vanessa calls them nightmares."
"When did you see him, sweetheart?"
Maya held up three fingers, then frowned. "After my birthday. He had a hurt hand."
Her third birthday had been two months after Julian vanished.
My chest tightened. Either a grieving child had imagined a visit, or my son had been alive long after his boat was declared lost.
I knelt beside her. "Did he say anything else?"
May you like
She stared past my shoulder at the hawk shining against my blouse.
"He said the bird was watching," she answered. "Then somebody pulled him away."
