Chapter 5 - THE SECRET BENEATH THE ROSES
“Mother was warning us about someone else,” Rebecca insisted.
Nathan held the folded paper in both hands.
“Who?”
Rebecca looked at the drawing.
“The child who says she remembers everything.”
Isabella stood beside the fireplace, pale and exhausted.
“I've never claimed to remember everything.”
Nathan looked at her.
“You've spent this entire night telling us things nobody else knew.”
“Because I was there.”
“So was I.”
Rebecca studied him.
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
“And how much do you remember?”
Nathan opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
For a moment, he looked almost ashamed.
“I remember Mother crying. Father arguing with someone in the library. Isabella leaving the house with a suitcase.”
“Do you remember me?” Rebecca asked.
He looked at her.
“No.”
Her expression crumpled.
Nathan moved closer.
“I wish I did.”
Rebecca nodded, trying to hold back tears.
“I know.”
Dorothy reached for the note.
“This isn't your mother's handwriting.”
Everyone turned.
Nathan frowned.
“You said she left messages.”
“She did. But this writing is different.”
I leaned closer.
The letters were narrow and slanted sharply to the right.
Dorothy's eyes filled with recognition.
“I've seen it before.”
“Where?” Nathan asked.
“On the hospital transfer form.”
She pointed toward the discharge paperwork.
The handwritten words Transferred to Private Care matched the writing on the note.
Nathan stared.
“Evelyn Price.”
Dorothy nodded.
“Evelyn left this.”
Rebecca looked toward the garden.
“Then why hide it beneath Mother's roses?”
Isabella spoke quietly.
“Because Evelyn knew Father would never destroy anything Mother loved.”
Nathan turned toward her.
“What did Evelyn know about this house?”
Isabella swallowed.
“She came here once.”
“When?”
“The week after Rebecca disappeared.”
Dorothy suddenly remembered something.
“She brought a small wooden box.”
Nathan looked at her.
“You saw her?”
“I was leaving the front hall. Evelyn was carrying the box into your mother's garden.”
I glanced at the folded drawing.
A stone bench.
A rose garden.
A hiding place.
Outside, the wind had grown colder.
Nathan asked everyone to stay inside while he checked the garden with Marco.
But Rebecca refused.
“If there's something buried out there about my life, I'm coming.”
Nathan looked at her for a long moment.
Then nodded.
“Get your coat.”
She was still wearing his.
I brought Dorothy a thick shawl.
Isabella followed us without speaking.
The western garden overlooked the water.
White roses had bloomed there every summer for decades, and even in October, a few stubborn flowers remained.
The stone bench sat beneath an old climbing rosebush.
Nathan knelt beside it.
At the base was a narrow stone border.
Marco brought a small garden tool from the shed.
“Carefully,” Dorothy whispered. “Please don't damage the roots.”
Nathan glanced at her.
Even now, she was thinking about his mother's roses.
“I won't.”
He removed the first stone.
Then the second.
Beneath the third was a rusted metal container wrapped in brittle oilcloth.
Rebecca gripped my hand.
Nathan lifted it free.
Inside were three objects.
A cassette tape.
A small gold wristwatch.
And a photograph of two women standing outside Saint Anne's Rehabilitation Center.
Rebecca leaned forward.
“That's Margaret.”
The younger woman beside Margaret had dark hair and a familiar smile.
Dorothy gasped.
“Evelyn Price.”
Nathan studied the photograph.
Evelyn and Margaret had known each other.
Perhaps they'd worked together.
Perhaps they'd hidden Rebecca together.
But the expression on Evelyn's face unsettled me.
She was smiling.
Not like a woman involved in a desperate rescue.
Like someone proud of what she had accomplished.
Rebecca picked up the wristwatch.
The back was engraved.
To Daniel. May you always have time.
“Daniel,” she whispered.
Nathan frowned.
“The premature boy?”
Dorothy nodded slowly.
“That was his first name.”
Rebecca stared.
“So he had a name.”
“Of course he did,” Dorothy said gently.
Rebecca turned the watch over.
Its hands had stopped at 2:17.
Nathan examined the cassette.
A label read:
Rose Garden — September 14.
“That was two weeks after Rebecca's birth,” Isabella said.
Nathan looked toward her.
“You remember the date?”
“I remember the day Mother stopped speaking to Father.”
Her voice trembled.
“I thought it was because she blamed him for Rebecca.”
Rebecca's eyes filled.
“Maybe she did.”
Nathan put the cassette carefully into his coat pocket.
“We'll listen inside.”
But Isabella shook her head.
“Not in Father's study.”
Nathan frowned.
“Why?”
“Because Catherine had people working there.”
“Who?”
“I don't know anymore.”
Nathan looked at her sharply.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I stopped knowing which employees answered to you and which answered to her.”
Marco straightened.
“Sir, I can secure the small library.”
Nathan nodded.
“Do that.”
Back inside, I brought warm tea for Dorothy and Rebecca.
Their hands were so cold they could barely hold the cups.
Nathan found an old cassette player in a cabinet of his father's office.
It took several attempts before the machine worked.
Then a woman's voice filled the room.
Gentle.
Tired.
And trembling with emotion.
“Nathan, Isabella, if you ever hear this, I want you to know that I loved all three of my children.”
Nathan slowly sat down.
His mother had died when he was thirty-one.
He hadn't heard her voice in years.
On the tape, she took a shaky breath.
“Rebecca is alive. I know that now. And I know someone has been using our daughter to control your father.”
Rebecca pressed a hand over her mouth.
The recording crackled.
“I asked Evelyn Price to help me. She says she knows where Rebecca is being kept. She has promised to leave a trail.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
Then his mother's voice changed.
“But Evelyn warned me about something else.”
A long pause.
“The baby boy was not supposed to survive. His transfer was changed after someone paid to keep him hidden.”
Dorothy began crying.
The tape continued.
“I don't know who his parents are. But I know that Catherine Bennett has been paying for his care.”
Isabella gripped the edge of the table.
Rebecca looked toward Nathan.
“Catherine was paying for both of us?”
Nathan didn't answer.
His mother's voice returned.
“I believe Catherine wants everyone to think Rebecca and the boy are connected. But the truth is much worse.”
The tape crackled again.
“I saw something in the hospital records. Something about a second family.”
Then the recording abruptly stopped.
Nathan pressed the playback button again.
Nothing.
The tape had been cut.
Someone had removed the rest.
Rebecca stared at the machine.
“Who cut it?”
Dorothy looked at Isabella.
But Isabella was staring at the gold watch.
“Daniel,” she whispered.
Nathan turned.
“What?”
“Catherine used to mention a boy named Daniel. She said he was a patient at Saint Anne's.”
Rebecca's expression changed.
“Margaret used to talk about a Daniel too.”
Nathan leaned forward.
“What did she say?”
“That he was clever. That he loved drawing boats. That he had a heart condition.”
She paused.
“And that he died before I was old enough to remember him.”
Dorothy shook her head.
“I never received any notice that Daniel died.”
Rebecca looked down at the watch.
Then she turned it over again.
There was a second engraving beneath the first, almost worn away.
Not a family name.
An address.
A street in Lowell.
Rebecca stared.
“I know that street.”
Nathan looked at her.
“How?”
“Because that's where I work.”
The room went silent.
Rebecca swallowed.
“I work at a community art center. There's an older man who volunteers there every Thursday. He repairs the children's bicycles and teaches them to draw boats.”
She looked at the gold watch.
“His name is Daniel.”
Nathan stood.
Rebecca's next words barely came out.
“And he has a scar on his chest from heart surgery.”
May you like
Then Dorothy whispered:
“If that's the same Daniel, Rebecca, he may be the only person alive who knows why you were taken.”
