Chapter 5: The Man Who Was Still Alive
Richard Hale.
I said the name to myself on the drive back to my hotel.
Quietly.
Like testing the weight of it.
The man who may have locked my mother in a burning room was still alive.
I sat on the edge of the hotel bed and opened my father's old leather satchel — the one I had brought with me because it was the last thing he had carried.
I had gone through it twice already, looking for nothing specific.
Just looking.
This time I found something.
Tucked into the inner lining, behind a false seam I had never noticed, was a folded piece of paper.
The fold was old and soft, the crease almost worn through.
I opened it carefully.
It was a name and an address.
Written in my father's handwriting.
*Richard Hale.
Marlowe House, Concord, MA.*
Below it, a single line:
*He knows she survived.
He has been looking.*
My hands went still.
My father had written this.
At some point in the last thirty years, my father had known that Richard Hale was searching for me.
And he had never told me.
I called Eleanor.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Did you know Richard Hale knew I was alive?" I asked.
A long pause.
"No," she said.
"I did not know that."
"My father wrote it down.
He had Richard's address.
He wrote that Richard had been looking for me."
Another pause.
Longer.
"Then Thomas wasn't hiding you from us," Eleanor said slowly.
"He was hiding you from Richard."
The difference landed like a stone dropped into still water.
I had spent the last several hours believing my father had stolen me.
Had lied to protect himself.
Had taken a baby and built a life on a secret.
But what if the secret wasn't about him at all?
"I need to find out what Richard knows," I said.
"Ava." Eleanor's voice sharpened.
"Richard Hale is not a man you approach without preparation."
"I'm not asking for permission."
"I know you're not.
I'm telling you that he is careful.
He has been careful for thirty years.
If he knows you survived and has been searching, then he has a reason.
And that reason is not a good one for you."
I looked at the address on the paper.
"Does he know about the music box?" I asked.
"I don't see how he could."
"Does he know my father is d\*ad?"
Silence.
"Eleanor."
"It's possible," she said quietly.
"Thomas was a firefighter.
His death would have been in the public record.
An obituary.
A department notice."
"So Richard may know my father is g\*ne.
And he may know that whatever was protecting me is now g\*ne with him."
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
"I'm going to Concord," I said.
"Not alone."
"I don't have anyone to bring."
"You have me." A pause.
"I have a car.
And I have thirty years of things I should have said to that man." Her voice was quiet and absolutely certain.
"Give me one hour."
I set the paper down on the bed beside the music box.
The lullaby was still in my head.
The one my father had played for me since I was small.
The one Catherine had chosen before I was born.
The one that had crossed a fire and thirty years and an entire buried life to find its way back to this room.
I picked up the music box and opened it.
May you like
The melody started again, thin and clear in the quiet room.
I let it play all the way through for the first time.
