Chapter 2 - THE SECRET BENEATH THE MUSIC BOX
“How long has your daughter been coming to work with you?”
Maria tightened both arms around Lily.
“Six weeks.”
Nathaniel looked at her sharply.
“Six weeks?”
“My babysitter moved to Hartford. I tried finding someone else, but I work twelve-hour shifts and…” She stopped, embarrassed. “Mrs. Whitmore said Lily could stay in the linen room as long as she didn’t disturb anyone.”
Mrs. Whitmore was Nathaniel’s estate manager.
Nathaniel hardly knew she had approved it.
That realization hurt more than it should have.
Five years earlier, Elizabeth had accused him of living inside his own house as though it were another office.
Apparently he had learned nothing.
Nathaniel looked back at Lily.
“Have you ever been in this study before today?”
The little girl shook her head.
“No.”
“Has anyone shown you pictures of my wife?”
“No,” Maria said immediately.
Nathaniel’s eyes moved toward Elizabeth’s photograph.
“Then how did she know?”
Maria had no answer.
Lily pointed toward the music box.
“The pretty lady opened the little door.”
Nathaniel stared at the box.
“What little door?”
Lily climbed away from her mother before Maria could stop her and walked toward the table.
She touched one side of the old wooden box.
“Here.”
Nathaniel followed.
The music box had belonged to Elizabeth’s grandmother.
Nathaniel had seen it thousands of times.
He had wound it for Grace when she was a baby.
He had watched Elizabeth keep theater tickets and family photographs inside.
There was no little door.
At least, none he knew about.
Lily pressed her thumb against a tiny carved rose.
Click.
Nathaniel froze.
A narrow panel released from the bottom.
Maria gasped.
Lily smiled proudly.
“See?”
Nathaniel’s hands started shaking again.
He pulled the hidden drawer open.
Inside were three things.
A brass key.
A photograph.
And another folded page.
Nathaniel stopped breathing.
He knew the paper.
Same yellow stationery.
Same handwriting.
The second page.
He snatched it from the compartment.
Maria turned Lily away slightly as if instinct told her whatever happened next belonged first to Nathaniel.
He unfolded the page.
Nathan,
If you come home tomorrow, really come home, not for dinner between two phone calls and not with one eye on your watch, I’ll know there is still something here worth fighting for.
I am not leaving you.
That is what I need you to understand.
I am leaving the house for a little while because I need you to decide whether you want a family or simply the idea of one waiting for you whenever business becomes quiet.
Grace still runs to the window every time she hears a car because she thinks it might be you.
Yesterday she asked me if Daddy lives at work.
I laughed so she wouldn’t see me cry.
Nathaniel’s vision blurred.
He kept reading.
I took off the ring because I need you to choose me again before I wear it again.
Not because I stopped loving you.
God help me, that would be easier.
I still love you so much that sometimes it makes me furious.
Come to Vermont.
Come without assistants.
Come without a driver.
Come without that terrible black phone.
Come because you want us.
If you do, I’ll put the ring back on myself.
And maybe years from now we’ll laugh about how close two stubborn people came to losing something good because neither of us knew how to say, “Please stay.”
Nathaniel made a sound.
Not a word.
The letter slipped from his fingers.
He took one step backward.
Then another.
Maria saw his face.
“Mr. Cole?”
Nathaniel’s knees buckled.
He hit the floor.
Maria lunged forward.
“Nathaniel!”
It was the first time she had ever used his first name.
He barely heard her.
For five years, he had imagined the missing end of Elizabeth’s letter in a hundred cruel ways.
I cannot do this anymore.
I am taking Grace.
I stopped loving you.
Don’t come after us.
He had punished himself with every possible sentence.
But Elizabeth had written the opposite.
I am not leaving you.
Come because you want us.
I’ll put the ring back on myself.
Nathaniel pressed both hands against his face.
“She was waiting for me.”
Maria knelt beside him.
He looked at her with eyes so devastated she almost looked away.
“She wanted me to follow her.”
Maria said nothing.
“I ignored three calls.”
His voice broke.
“I was arguing over forty million dollars while my wife was calling me to ask whether our marriage was worth saving.”
Lily came closer.
Maria reached for her, but Nathaniel shook his head.
The child crouched in front of him.
“The lady said you didn’t know.”
Nathaniel stared at her.
“What?”
“She said you didn’t know the bad truck was coming.”
Maria’s face changed.
Nathaniel slowly lowered his hands.
“What truck?”
Lily looked toward the window.
“The red one.”
Nathaniel’s breathing stopped.
Maria gripped her daughter’s shoulders.
“Lily.”
“It had a big white bird.”
Nathaniel stood so quickly Maria flinched.
“What did you say?”
Lily looked frightened now.
He forced himself to lower his voice.
“What was on the truck, sweetheart?”
“A white bird.”
Nathaniel stared at Maria.
Cole Freight’s old regional logo had been a white falcon.
Five years ago, some trailers still carried it.
Nathaniel turned toward Elizabeth’s hidden drawer.
The brass key.
The photograph.
He picked up the picture.
It showed Elizabeth standing beside a highway rest stop.
Grace was beside her holding an ice cream cone.
Behind them, partly visible at the edge of the image, was a red Cole Freight trailer.
White falcon on the side.
Nathaniel turned the photograph over.
Elizabeth had written something on the back.
May 14.
Trailer 7814.
Ask Tomas why it was still on the road.
Maria went completely still.
Nathaniel saw it.
The blood leaving her face.
“What?”
She didn’t answer.
“Maria.”
Her lips parted.
Nathaniel stepped closer.
“Who is Tomas?”
Maria looked at Lily.
Then back at him.
“My husband.”
Nathaniel stared.
“The one who died?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
“What did he do?”
Maria swallowed.
“He was a mechanic.”
Nathaniel already knew what she was going to say.
Still, hearing it felt like another floor collapsing beneath him.
“At Cole Freight.”
The room went silent.
Nathaniel looked at Elizabeth’s handwriting.
Ask Tomas.
Then at Maria.
“Did your husband know my wife?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he ever mention trailer 7814?”
Maria shook her head.
Then stopped.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
“There was a number.”
Nathaniel moved closer.
“What number?”
“Tomas used to have nightmares after he lost his job.”
“Lost his job?”
“He said someone wanted him to sign a maintenance form.”
Nathaniel’s jaw tightened.
“What maintenance form?”
“I don’t know. He never told me everything. He thought he was protecting us.”
Maria looked suddenly sick.
“But sometimes he would wake up saying the same number.”
Nathaniel waited.
Maria whispered it.
“Seven-eight-one-four.”
Nathaniel closed his eyes.
The trailer in Elizabeth’s photograph.
The trailer his dead wife had been investigating.
The trailer Maria’s dead husband had refused to certify.
And now Lily, a child born years after the crash, had described a red truck carrying Cole Freight’s old white falcon.
Nathaniel looked toward the sapphire ring lying beside Elizabeth’s unfinished letter.
For five years, he had believed the worst thing he had done was ignore his wife’s final calls.
Now another possibility was forming.
One far more terrible.
Elizabeth’s death might not have been only a tragedy.
May you like
It might have been connected to his company.
And someone inside Cole Freight had spent five years making sure Nathaniel never discovered why.
