Chapter 5: The Boy at the Bottom of the Stairs
He made two calls from the corridor while Marsh stood inside the doorway watching Beatrice.
The first call was to his attorney, a man named Garrett Foss who had handled Vale Logistics matters for nine years and who answered on the second ring despite the hour.
"I need you here tonight," Dominic said.
"Bring whoever handles criminal matters."
"Criminal—"
"Tonight, Garrett."
The second call was to a private physician he trusted, a woman named Dr.
Anand who ran a concierge practice for several of Chicago's wealthier families and who asked no unnecessary questions.
"I have a patient who has been in an isolated environment for approximately two years," Dominic said.
"I need a full assessment.
Discreet."
"I'll be there within the hour."
He ended the call and stood in the corridor for a moment.
Then he went downstairs.
Claire was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase.
Oliver was beside her — not touching her, but close.
Three inches of space between them.
He was holding the stuffed rabbit he carried everywhere, the one Dominic had always assumed was a comfort object from before his mother's death.
It wasn't the same rabbit.
Dominic stopped on the second-to-last step.
The rabbit Oliver was holding was pale grey, with one ear slightly bent.
Identical to the one Celeste had been clutching upstairs.
"Where did he get that?" Dominic asked.
Claire looked at it.
"He had it when I came downstairs.
I didn't give it to him."
Dominic sat down on the step above them.
Oliver didn't look up.
He was turning the rabbit over in his hands with the focused attention of a child examining something precious.
"Oliver." Dominic kept his voice quiet.
"Did someone give you that?"
The boy was still for a moment.
Then he pointed upstairs.
Dominic's throat tightened.
"When?"
Oliver held up two fingers.
"Two days ago?"
Oliver shook his head.
He held up two fingers again, then made a gesture Dominic didn't immediately understand — a slow, repeated motion, like turning the pages of a calendar.
"Two months?" Claire said softly.
Oliver nodded.
Dominic looked at his son.
"Has someone been giving you things?
From upstairs?"
Oliver nodded again.
Then he reached into the small pocket of his trousers and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
He held it out to Dominic.
It was a drawing.
Crayon.
A woman with long dark hair and a small boy with brown curls standing in what appeared to be a garden.
Above them, in careful adult handwriting that Dominic recognized immediately, were four words.
*I love you, Oliver.*
Dominic's hand closed around the paper.
"She's been communicating with him," Claire said.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"That's why he kept pointing upstairs.
He wasn't just frightened of the room."
"He was trying to get to her," Dominic said.
Oliver looked up at his father for the first time all evening.
His expression was not the expression of a violent child.
It was not the expression of a disturbed child, a grieving child, a child with behavioral problems.
It was the expression of a four-year-old boy who had spent fourteen months trying to tell every adult in the house the same thing, in the only language available to him.
And every single one of them had run.
Dominic put his hand on his son's head.
Oliver went very still, the way he always did when touched — but this time he didn't pull away.
"I'm sorry," Dominic said.
He wasn't sure if he was talking to Oliver.
He heard footsteps on the upper landing.
Marsh's voice, low and controlled.
Then Beatrice's, sharper, and then a silence that meant Marsh had said something that ended the conversation.
Claire looked at Dominic.
"What's going to happen now?"
"I don't know yet," he said.
"But she's not staying in that room."
"And your mother?"
May you like
Dominic looked at the drawing in his hand.
"She's not staying in this house," he said.
