Chapter 4 - WHAT LILLIAN BENNETT PROMISED
Margaret’s piano had not been played in sixteen years.
It stood in the music room beneath a white linen cover.
Adrian pulled the cloth away.
Dust rose into the air.
Celeste walked toward the bench.
“The piano, not the bench,” she said.
She knelt beside the lower panel.
Her gold key fit a tiny lock hidden beneath the keyboard.
A section of polished wood opened.
Inside was an empty compartment.
Celeste went white.
“No.”
Adrian crouched beside her.
“You expected something.”
“The red book.”
“Who else knew?”
“My father.”
“He’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“Then who removed it?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrian examined the compartment.
No dust.
Someone had opened it recently.
Rachel the maid would once have cleaned around that piano without thinking twice.
Rachel the possible DeLuca daughter now stood watching a thirty-year-old secret disappear one step ahead of us.
I hated both versions of myself.
Eleanor sat heavily.
“Margaret trusted the wrong hiding place.”
Celeste looked at her.
“No. My father chose it.”
That mattered.
Adrian stood.
“Why would Victor hide evidence inside my mother’s piano?”
“Because after she died, nobody touched her things.”
A sad answer.
A practical one.
Adrian looked toward me.
“Your father.”
I stiffened.
“What about him?”
“If Lillian knew everything, Thomas may know something.”
“My father is sick.”
“I’m not suggesting an interrogation.”
“You interrogate people by breathing near them.”
Celeste almost smiled.
It vanished immediately.
Adrian ignored her.
“Rachel, if he helped raise you, he deserves to hear this from you before anyone else does.”
That stopped me.
He was right.
Two hours later, we were at the rehabilitation hospital where Thomas Bennett had spent the previous month recovering from heart surgery.
Adrian waited outside the room.
I noticed.
He could have walked in.
He could have demanded answers.
Instead he gave me the choice.
My father looked smaller than he had the week before.
Gray hair.
Hospital gown.
Reading glasses balanced crookedly on his nose.
He smiled when he saw me.
“Kiddo.”
That nearly broke me.
I sat beside him.
“Dad, I need to ask you something.”
His smile disappeared before I finished.
Parents know.
Maybe that is what frightened me.
I placed the photograph on his blanket.
He looked at Margaret.
Then Lillian.
Then the babies.
His face collapsed.
“Oh, Rachel.”
Not confusion.
Recognition.
I began crying before he did.
“You knew.”
He removed his glasses.
“Your mother made me promise.”
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
My voice rose.
“I found a room underneath my employer’s house with pictures of me as a baby.”
Thomas stared.
“You found Room Fourteen?”
That hurt even more.
“You knew about that too?”
“Only what Lillian told me.”
“When were you planning to tell me?”
“When you were eighteen.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Interesting. I missed that birthday.”
“Your mother died when you were seven.”
His eyes filled.
“After that, I kept telling myself I’d wait until you were older. Then older became twenty. Twenty became twenty-five. Every year I got more afraid that telling you would sound like admitting our family had been fake.”
I wiped my face.
“It wasn’t fake.”
“I know that now.”
He looked down.
“I didn’t then.”
I told him about Eleanor.
About Adrian.
About Celeste.
About the altered birth record.
When I mentioned Margaret’s trust, he shook his head immediately.
“Lillian never took money.”
“I know.”
“She was offered it.”
“By whom?”
“Margaret.”
He struggled upright.
“Your mother refused. Said if she raised you for money, Victor could someday claim you’d been purchased.”
That sounded exactly like the woman I remembered.
My mother had worked double shifts as a hospital receptionist.
She bought generic cereal.
Clipped coupons.
Drove the same Buick until the floor rusted.
She had refused DeLuca money.
Of course she had.
Thomas pointed toward the cabinet.
“Bottom drawer.”
Inside was an old shoebox.
He had written LILLIAN across the lid.
My hands shook opening it.
A rosary.
Two photographs.
An expired bus ticket.
A dried flower wrapped in paper.
And an old women’s wristwatch.
Gold.
Small.
Stopped at 2:13.
I lifted it.
“Margaret’s,” Dad said.
“How do you know?”
“Because Lillian tried to give it back.”
“To whom?”
“Gabriel.”
Adrian’s father.
“When?”
“About fifteen years ago.”
A year after Margaret died.
My heart started pounding.
“What happened?”
“He came to our house.”
I stared.
“Gabriel DeLuca knew where I lived?”
Thomas nodded.
“He knew exactly where you were.”
Everything inside me went still.
“Did he see me?”
“Yes.”
“How old was I?”
“Fourteen.”
Memories shifted.
A black sedan across the street.
A man standing under a bare maple tree while I walked home from school.
I had forgotten.
Or told myself I had.
“What did he want?”
“To bring you back.”
My breath caught.
“But Lillian was dead.”
“Yes.”
“And you said no?”
Thomas’s jaw tightened.
“He didn’t ask.”
That sounded like the DeLuca men I knew.
“What stopped him?”
“You did.”
I frowned.
“You came home from school. Saw me arguing with him on the porch. You walked up, put your backpack down, and asked if I needed help.”
Thomas smiled painfully.
“Gabriel looked at you for maybe ten seconds.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“He left?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I never understood.”
Thomas pointed toward the watch.
“Until that night.”
I turned it over.
The back opened.
Inside the cover was a tiny photograph.
A man younger than Adrian held a baby girl.
Gabriel DeLuca.
Me.
Written beneath it were four words.
I knew she lived.
But there was something else folded behind the photograph.
A narrow strip of paper.
I unfolded it.
Margaret’s handwriting.
If Gabriel comes for her without the red book, do not trust him.
Below that was a date.
The date Margaret died.
And beneath it—
a place.
Harbor Road. 2:00 a.m. Victor will be there.
Thomas looked at me.
“I never saw that before.”
I believed him.
My fingers tightened around the paper.
Adrian entered only when I called his name.
I handed him the note.
He read it once.
Then again.
His face became frighteningly calm.
“My mother met Victor the night she died.”
Thomas whispered, “Rachel.”
We looked at him.
He was staring at the photograph of Gabriel holding me.
“There’s something you should know about that picture.”
“What?”
“I didn’t take it.”
“Then who did?”
Thomas swallowed.
May you like
“Celeste.”
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