Chapter 3 - THE DRAWING IN THE VENT
Daniel didn’t take his eyes off the second-floor window before Leo quickly yanked the yellow sketchpad down and vanished behind the velvet curtains.
“Who has been in my library, Emily?” Daniel asked, his voice dropping an octave.
Emily blinked, turning her head to glance up at the empty window above the garage. “What are you talking about? No one has been in the library except the window cleaners on Tuesday. Leo has been up there with his tutor since two o’clock.”
Daniel didn’t argue. With one arm around Margaret’s waist, he guided his mother past Emily and straight through the front doors into the heated foyer. The contrast between the freezing driveway and the seventy-two-degree marble hall made Margaret shudder violently.
“Clara, go to the kitchen and make a pot of chamomile tea, and bring the first-aid kit to the downstairs parlor,” Daniel ordered. He didn’t wait to see if the housekeeper obeyed. He looked at his mother. “Wait for me by the fireplace, Mom. Lock the parlor door from the inside until you hear my voice.”
“Daniel, be careful,” Margaret whispered, squeezing his hand with her raw fingers. “She’s hidden things in the East Wing. Look for my blue velvet jewelry box.”
Daniel nodded once, waited until the heavy parlor door clicked shut behind his mother, and took the grand staircase two steps at a time. Emily’s heels clicked rapidly against the hardwood floor right behind him.
“Daniel, you’re acting like a madman!” Emily called out, slightly out of breath as she followed him down the second-floor hallway. “You come home after twelve weeks abroad, exhausted and jet-lagged, and you’re letting an eighty-year-old woman’s paranoia turn our home upside down!”
Daniel pushed open the door to Leo’s bedroom.
The room smelled of cedarwood and crayons. Seven-year-old Leo was sitting cross-legged on the rug beside his toy train set, meticulously lining up little wooden boxcars. His small shoulders went rigid the second the door opened. The yellow sketchpad was nowhere in sight.
“Hey, buddy,” Daniel said softly, dropping to one knee beside the rug so he wasn’t towering over the boy. “I missed you.”
Leo looked at Daniel, then immediately looked past his shoulder at Emily standing in the doorway. The boy kept his chin tucked down.
“Hi, Dad,” Leo said in a tiny, flat voice. “I was good today. I finished my spelling words.”
“I know you’re always good, Leo,” Daniel said gently, noticing how the boy’s knuckles were white around a red wooden caboose. “Can you show me the picture you were holding up at the window just now?”
Leo’s lower lip quivered. “I didn’t draw anything. My pad is all used up.”
“He has an active imagination, darling,” Emily said smoothly, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed. “He’s been watching cartoons with the nanny and making up stories about burglars and monsters all week. Ask Dr. Vance—adopted children from the foster system often go through a phase of fabricating stories when a parent travels for long periods. It’s an attachment defense.”
Daniel ignored her. He looked at the brass air-conditioning vent near the baseboard behind Leo’s toy chest. One of the little brass screws was sitting on the carpet, and a corner of yellow paper was sticking out behind the metal grate.
While pretending to reach for a stray train track near the wall, Daniel’s fingers brushed the underside of the wooden toy chest. Taped beneath the lip of the wood was the missing silver medallion from Margaret’s broken rosary.
Daniel palmed the tiny silver piece without Emily seeing and stood up. He realized instantly that pressing Leo while Emily was standing three feet away would only terrify the child.
“Alright, buddy,” Daniel said warmly, ruffling Leo’s dark hair. “Why don’t you bring your train set downstairs to the parlor? Grandma’s in there by the fire, and I bought Swiss chocolates at the airport.”
Leo’s eyes lit up for a fraction of a second before he looked at Emily for permission.
“Go ahead, sweetie,” Emily said pleasantly. “Wash your hands first.”
As soon as Leo hurried down the hall toward the stairs, Daniel walked straight past Emily into the master suite at the end of the corridor.
“What are you looking for now?” Emily asked, her calm facade finally cracking into sharp irritation as she followed him into her walk-in closet.
“My mother’s blue velvet jewelry box,” Daniel said, pulling open the double doors of Emily’s island dresser. “And the truth about why my son is afraid to speak in his own bedroom.”
“Look all you want!” Emily snapped, throwing her hands up. “I’m the one who stayed here running this estate, managing your charity boards, and dealing with your mother’s decline while you lived out of five-star hotels in London and Singapore! Do you know what it’s like being married to a ghost who thinks throwing money at a family is the same as being in it?”
The raw bitterness in her voice made Daniel pause. For three years, he had worked seventy-hour weeks expanding his logistics empire, telling himself it was for their future.
Then his hand hit something hard wrapped in a silk scarf at the back of Emily’s bottom lingerie drawer.
He pulled it out. It was Margaret’s faded blue velvet box.
Inside was Margaret’s cell phone, turned off, alongside a stack of bank withdrawal slips from Margaret’s late husband’s pension account—totaling $45,000 over six months, each signed with a shaky signature. Beneath the slips was a gold money clip engraved with the initials A.V. and the crest of the Vance Private Psychiatric Clinic.
“Dr. Arthur Vance?” Daniel turned slowly to face his wife, holding up the gold clip. “The doctor who told you my mother was losing her mind left his personal money clip in your lingerie drawer?”
Emily’s breath hitched. She backed up a step toward the closet door.
“He’s not having an affair with me, Daniel, if that’s what your ego is jumping to,” Emily said, her voice shaking. “Arthur Vance is my biological father. My mother was his receptionist thirty-six years ago before he married into society, and his clinic is facing a half-million-dollar malpractice audit.”
Daniel stared at her. “You were stealing my mother’s pension to bail out your secret father?”
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“Forty-five thousand isn’t a drop in the bucket for what he needs!” Emily cried out, tears of desperation finally spilling over her lashes. “He didn’t want her pension, Daniel! He needed her committed by Thanksgiving so you’d never find out what’s written on the back of the original 1994 deed to this property!”
Downstairs, the heavy front door slammed shut, followed by the sudden, terrified scream of his mother calling Leo’s name.
