Chapter 8 - The Fall of Prescott Manor
Sophie let out a small gasp, reaching into the box with trembling fingers. She picked up the silver moon.
“You knew,” Nora whispered, looking up at Rebecca. “You knew he was going to do something to you.”
Rebecca sat down on the bare floorboards of the room that had once held their cribs, pulling both girls into her lap. Outside, the rain was beginning to subside, giving way to the pale, slate-gray light of dawn breaking over the Atlantic.
“I knew your father was slipping into a very dark place,” Rebecca said softly, tracing the contours of their faces, marveling at how much of her own mother lived in Nora’s brow, and how Sophie had her grandfather’s bright, observant eyes. “He was gambling with company funds, and he had realized that the moment I turned thirty, the trust my grandfather built would automatically transfer control entirely to me—and eventually to you two. I didn't think he would try to kill me. I thought he would try to frame me, or take you away from me legally. So I hid the letters and the jewelry here, hoping that if anything happened, someone would find them and give them to you.”
“Why didn't you come for us sooner?” Sophie asked. There was no anger in her voice—only the fragile, aching confusion of a child trying to stitch eight years of loneliness back together. “We waited. Every night, Nora and I would look out the window at the ocean, wishing you would just walk up the driveway.”
Rebecca’s tears finally flowed freely, warm and cleansing, falling onto the silver pendants resting in her palm.
“Because Graham had judges in his pocket, baby,” Rebecca confessed, holding them so tightly she could feel their synchronized heartbeats against her ribs. “He had private investigators watching the borders. If I had come back with half-healed scars and no money, he would have had me committed to a psychiatric facility, or finished what he started on the road. I had to become invisible. I had to work under a false name, save every penny, find Eric, gather the bank records, and wait for the exact moment when the federal indictment was unsealed.”
She looked down at her coarse gray uniform, the stiff polyester that had allowed her to slip past the estate’s private security cameras three days ago as an agency replacement maid.
“I had to put on this apron,” Rebecca smiled through her tears, “just so I could get close enough to hear your voices again.”
Nora took the half-star pendant from the box. She held it next to the half that hung around her neck.
May you like
With a soft, metallic click, the two pieces snapped together. The seam was barely visible—a jagged line through the silver that didn't break the shape, but rather proved it had survived the break.
***
