Chapter 3 - ST. ANNE’S REMEMBERED EVERYTHING
St. Anne’s had been abandoned for three years, which I learned only when our driver turned off the boulevard and stopped in front of a chain-link fence wrapped in dead ivy. The rehabilitation center looked smaller than it did in my childhood memories. I remembered bright hallways, lemon disinfectant, and the vending machine where Dad bought me hot chocolate while Mom had physical therapy. Now half the windows were boarded, the fountain in the courtyard was dry, and rainwater had filled the stone basin with brown leaves. A redevelopment sign promised luxury apartments “coming soon,” as if the building’s history could be covered by new glass and polished concrete. My father stared through the windshield. “I haven’t been back since Olivia died,” he said. Neither had I.
Nora Bennett lived in a narrow brick house four blocks away. Victoria had her address memorized, which did nothing to make me trust her more. Nora opened the door before we knocked twice. She was in her late sixties, with silver braids and sharp blue eyes, and when she saw my father she pressed one hand to her mouth. “Ethan Hart,” she said. Then she saw me. Her eyes filled immediately. “Lord. Olivia’s face.” I had heard that my whole life, but from Nora it felt less like a compliment and more like an accusation directed at time.
She let us in only after my father said we were not there on behalf of Daniel Mercer. At that name, she locked the door behind us. Her living room smelled like coffee, old books, and eucalyptus. On one wall hung framed photographs of nurses from St. Anne’s. On another was a watercolor of the courtyard fountain. Victoria remained near the doorway, still wearing the borrowed black raincoat over the lower half of her wedding dress. Nora noticed the satin hem. “Bad day?” she asked. “Complicated,” Victoria replied. Nora gave her a look so dry it almost made me laugh, and I hated that laughter could still exist inside me.
When I placed the photograph on Nora’s kitchen table, her expression changed. “March fourteenth,” she said. “I took that shift.” My father leaned forward. “You remember the exact date?” Nora looked at him as if he had asked whether she remembered a fire. “Your wife made me promise I would.” She told us Mom had requested that certain visitors be logged twice—once in the official computer system and once in a paper ledger Nora kept in a locked cabinet. Olivia believed the electronic records were being altered. At first Nora thought fear was making her paranoid. Then an entry vanished: a visit from Daniel that Nora had personally witnessed.
My father sat back hard. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Nora’s face softened. “Because Olivia begged us not to. She said you were already drowning trying to keep the company afloat and raise Lucy while she recovered. She believed if Daniel realized you knew, he’d move faster.” Dad’s eyes turned red. I had never thought of my mother as someone who could keep secrets from him. In my childhood, they had seemed fused by love. Learning otherwise felt like discovering a hidden room in the home where I grew up. The room did not erase the rest of the house, but it changed its shape.
Nora went upstairs and returned with a metal document box. Inside were photocopied visitor logs, medication schedules, and handwritten nursing notes. Victoria’s name appeared eleven times over six months. Daniel’s appeared four times officially and, according to Nora’s red pen, nine times in reality. “What happened during those visits?” I asked. Nora looked at Victoria. “Somebody should let her answer that.” Victoria removed the raincoat and sat at the table, the absurd whiteness of her wedding dress glowing beneath the kitchen light. For the first time, she looked young to me—not the woman who had reorganized our house and selected flowers for a reception, but the twenty-six-year-old analyst she must once have been.
“I came the first time because Daniel sent me,” Victoria said. “He told me Olivia was confused about some accounts and that I should explain them. What he really wanted was for me to find out what she had copied.” She looked at my father. “I was ambitious. I thought Daniel was giving me a chance to prove myself. I didn’t know about the accident. I didn’t know how far it went.” On the second visit, Mom showed her bank transfers Daniel’s team had hidden inside foundation disbursements. On the third, Mom played a voicemail in which Daniel warned her to stop “inventing patterns that could hurt people.” By the fifth visit, Victoria believed her.
“Then why stay working for him?” I asked. “Because your mother asked me to.” The answer stunned even Nora. Victoria explained that Mom needed someone inside Mercer Capital. She needed transaction records, calendar entries, correspondence—proof that could not be dismissed as the suspicions of an injured woman on medication. Victoria agreed to help, but there was a problem: her younger brother, Caleb, had just been arrested after a drunken crash. Daniel knew. He paid Caleb’s legal fees without Victoria asking, then made sure she understood what would happen if she became disloyal. “He didn’t threaten Caleb directly,” Victoria said. “Daniel never said things that could be recorded. He just kept reminding me how much damage a felony conviction could do to my family.”
Nora slid a yellowed envelope across the table. “Olivia gave me this the week before she left St. Anne’s,” she said. My name was written on the front. LUCY, IF THEY COME BACK. My heart kicked hard. The envelope had already been opened, but the paper inside was not a letter. It was a child’s drawing in purple crayon. I recognized my own eight-year-old handwriting: MOM + DAD + LUCY beneath three stick figures. Mom had kept it. On the back she had written six words in pen: BLUE BIRD. BASEMENT. THIRD LOCKER. 7-1-9.
My father whispered, “What does that mean?” Nora shook her head. “I never knew.” Victoria did. I saw it in her face before she spoke. “The Blue Bird was a coffee shop across from St. Anne’s. It closed years ago. The basement had storage lockers for neighboring businesses.” Nora frowned. “The building’s still there. It’s a pharmacy now.” My father was already standing. Then Nora grabbed his wrist. “There’s more.”
She reached into the box and pulled out a small digital recorder sealed in a plastic evidence bag. “Olivia left this too. She told me to give it to Lucy only if Victoria came back into the family.” The room seemed to tilt.
May you like
“Why?” I asked. Nora’s eyes moved to Victoria. “Because Olivia did not know whether Victoria would come back to protect you… or finish what Daniel started.” Victoria went completely still. My father said, “Play it.” Nora pressed the button. Static filled the kitchen. Then my mother’s voice, thinner than the one in my memory but unmistakably hers, came out of a cheap speaker after nine years of silence.
“If Lucy is hearing this,” Olivia said, “then Victoria has found Ethan again.” I stopped breathing. “There is something I never told either of them.” The recording clicked, crackled— and died. Nora stared at the device. “Battery.” Nobody moved for half a second. Then every phone in the room began ringing at once.
