Chapter 9 - The Night Mia Stopped Hiding
Mia refused to leave her room after the photograph arrived. She was twelve, and she had already learned that the adults who claimed to protect her could disappear. I brought her breakfast on a tray and sat outside the door until she invited me in.
“I heard Giselle say she would send me away,” she told me. “She said Toby would forget me.”
I told her that was a threat, not a prophecy. Then I asked what she wanted us to understand about the night of the broken mirror. She drew the room from memory. Her sketch showed Giselle standing beside the strongbox, a gold bracelet caught on a broken hinge. It also showed a second person near the doorway.
“Who is that?” I asked.
Mia hesitated. “Mr. Hale. He told her to hurry.”
The sketch became a lead, not proof. Investigators recovered a tiny strand of gold from the damaged lock, consistent with Giselle's bracelet. They also found Hale's fingerprints on the metal panel. Mia had given us the detail that led them there.
At dinner, Dante told her she had helped. She asked whether that meant she could stay with Toby. “No one is sending either of you away for telling the truth,” he said.
Toby raised his glass of lemonade. “To Mia,” he announced. She smiled for the first time in days.
I almost let myself relax. Then a message arrived on Dante's phone from a number he did not recognize. It contained a photograph of Lily outside her school in Newark.
My hands went cold. The message beneath the photograph was simple: GIVE US THE CARD OR THE GIRL COMES WITH US.
I called Lily. She answered immediately, annoyed that I sounded frightened. I told her to go inside and find a teacher while I contacted the police. She did not argue.
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Dante looked at me across the table. “Clara—”
“Don't tell me she's safe,” I said. “Help me make sure she is.”
