Chapter 6 - The Photograph of My Mother's Door
I called my mother before I called Luca.
It was a small decision.
It changed everything.
"Mom," I said when she answered, "are you alone?"
"If you don't count the television arguing with itself. Why?"
Her voice was warm and annoyed in exactly the way I loved. I could hear a game show in the background and the hum of her refrigerator.
"Lock the door, please. And don't let anybody in until I get there."
The television went silent.
"Hannah, what's wrong?"
I swallowed. "Someone sent me a picture of our building. They're trying to scare me because of something happening at work. I'm calling the police."
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Then breathe, honey. Tell me what you need me to do."
That was my mother. Her hip had been replaced six weeks ago, she still couldn't climb the stairs without pain, and her first thought was how to help me.
I gave her the number for the building manager and asked her to call the downstairs neighbor she trusted. Then I called Detective Ellis, forwarded the messages, and told Luca.
He looked at my phone for a long moment.
"I can send people," he said.
"You can offer," I replied. "But my mother gets to choose who comes into her apartment."
He raised his eyes to mine.
Then he nodded.
"You're right."
The speed of his agreement surprised me. I'd expected arguments, expensive arrangements, maybe a driver sent without permission.
Instead, he asked for her telephone number and called with me beside him. He introduced himself, apologized for the risk his household had brought into her life, and offered a secure hotel or temporary apartment while police investigated. My mother asked three questions about wheelchair access, the cost, and whether I would be able to visit.
He answered all three.
"If I accept," she told him, "I'm doing it because my daughter asked me to be careful. Not because I owe your family anything."
"Understood, Mrs. Collins."
She chose a ground-floor apartment belonging to a licensed short-term housing service. Ellis arranged a patrol check and documented the threats. I went with my mother while an officer met us at her building. We packed medication, her favorite blue cardigan, and the small framed picture of my father who had died when I was sixteen.
Her bedroom was small, but every object had a story. A chipped mug from a county fair. A photo of my first school play, where I'd been a tree and looked deeply offended about it. My father's watch, stopped at the wrong time because Mom kept forgetting to replace the battery.
We packed slowly because she couldn't bend easily, and because leaving frightened her more than she wanted to admit.
"What about the tomatoes on the balcony?" she asked.
"I'll ask the neighbor to water them."
"And the mail?"
"We'll forward what we can. I'll check the rest."
"I hate this," she said at last.
"Me too."
She took my hand. "I remember when your dad died, everyone kept talking over us. Lawyers and insurance people and relatives who meant well. Nobody asked which of his things you wanted to keep. You kept his watch in your pillowcase for a month."
I stared at her. I hadn't realized she'd known.
"I knew," she said. "I let you have it because it was yours to remember him with."
I thought of Sophie and her ribbon. For one moment, grief linked the little girl in a mansion to the child I'd been in a cramped apartment. We had both needed somebody to say that love didn't expire when a person died.
Mom noticed my hands trembling as I folded her clothes.
"Tell me what happened," she said.
I sat beside her on the bed and told her about Teresa, Sophie, and the bell.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she touched my cheek.
"You did the right thing speaking up. Now you have to let other people help with the dangerous parts."
"I don't want you to pay for my choice."
"Then don't let fear make every choice from now on."
I wanted to cry.
Instead, I helped her into the car.
That afternoon, Detective Ellis interviewed the building manager. He confirmed a stranger had asked which apartment belonged to Elaine Collins. The description was vague, but the visit had been recorded on a lobby camera. Ellis treated it as an intimidation complaint connected to the investigation.
At the mansion, Luca canceled the wedding. Not postponed it. Canceled it.
I heard the news from Mrs. Carter, who told me the florist had been crying over a warehouse full of white roses. I felt sorry for the florist. I felt nothing for the flowers.
When I returned, Sophie was waiting in the library with a sketchbook on her lap. Mrs. Carter stayed nearby while I sat on the carpet across from her.
"Grandma says my mom liked birds," she said.
"She did."
Sophie opened her book. There were drawings of a swallow, a wren, and a tiny house by a lake.
"Mommy told me a wren hides things when winter comes. She said if the big people forgot where home was, the little bird would remember."
"Did she tell you where it hid things?"
Sophie tapped the paper. "In the place that stayed cold even in summer."
I thought of the message on Teresa's photograph.
WHEN THE WATER FREEZES.
"Did your mom draw you that?"
"No. We played a game at Wren House. She used to hide jelly beans in the old icebox, and I'd find them."
My heart beat faster.
An icebox.
An old-fashioned cabinet that looked like a refrigerator but used blocks of ice before electricity. The perfect place to hide a small compartment in a house nobody visited anymore.
I didn't ask Sophie to keep a secret. I didn't make her promise not to tell Vanessa or ask her to help us search.
I asked Mrs. Carter to call Luca.
Ten minutes later, I was sitting across from Daniel and Detective Ellis, describing a child's memory of a game.
"We have reason to believe Wren House contains evidence," Daniel said. "Catherine owned the property personally. Luca can authorize entry as the estate representative, but we'll document every step."
Ellis agreed to have a local officer accompany them and to request a warrant if necessary for items belonging to other people.
Luca looked at me.
"You don't have to go."
"I know."
"You aren't hired to investigate crimes."
"I know that too."
I took a breath.
"But I remember what Sophie said because she trusted me. If you need help understanding her drawings, I'm willing. And when we find whatever Catherine left, I want to be there when you tell Sophie she was brave."
He nodded.
We drove north along the lake the next morning. Marco was behind the wheel. Daniel rode in front. I sat in the back beside Luca, careful to keep a respectful distance. Gray water rolled beneath a sky that looked scraped clean of color.
The drive had given me too much time to think. For the first hour, Luca studied the lake without speaking. Then he asked about my father's watch. I told him what my mother had remembered, and he listened with an attention I hadn't expected.
"Catherine used to fix broken things," he said. "Not just furniture. Friendships. Strangers' moods. She'd invite someone for coffee if they looked lonely in a store. It drove me crazy because I thought she was too trusting."
"Was she?"
"Sometimes. But she was also usually right about who needed help."
He showed me a photograph on his phone, one he'd saved before the accident. Catherine stood in front of Wren House wearing paint-splattered overalls, her dark hair tied with a blue ribbon. Sophie, then six, was riding on Luca's shoulders. They were all laughing, and I could see a different man beneath the guarded expression he wore now.
"You can miss that family and still make a new way of living," I said.
"I don't know how."
"Neither do I," I admitted. "But I think it begins with the people who are here."
He looked at the photograph again. When he put the phone away, he asked Marco to stop at a roadside bakery for coffee and a small chocolate pastry. "Catherine always bought one here," he said. "She claimed it made long drives less serious."
We shared the pastry standing outside in the cold. It didn't solve anything. But it made Wren House feel less like the site of a search and more like the home of a real woman.
Wren House was smaller than I'd imagined. White clapboard siding. Blue shutters. A porch with a crooked swing. On the mailbox, someone had painted a tiny bird.
Luca stopped in the doorway.
"She wanted to bring Sophie here every summer," he said. "I kept saying we'd come when work slowed down."
"Work doesn't slow down on its own," I replied.
He looked at me.
"No," he said. "It doesn't."
Inside, the house smelled of cedar and dust. The kitchen still held jars of dried lavender. A chipped ceramic rooster sat on the windowsill. It reminded me so much of my mother's kitchen that my throat tightened.
A local officer photographed the rooms while we waited.
Then Daniel pointed toward the back wall.
There, beneath a checked cloth, stood a wooden icebox with a copper latch.
And painted above it, almost hidden by a calendar, were four small words.
THE LITTLE BIRD REMEMBERS.
May you like
The latch was hanging open.
Someone had been there before us.
