"All my life."
Victoria pressed a hand against her mouth.
"Why didn't she contact me?"
Lucy looked down at the pendant.
"She said she couldn't."
"Couldn't, or wouldn't?"
"I don't know."
Edward stepped forward.
"Victoria, this is becoming ridiculous. The child may have been given some old family object. That doesn't prove anything."
Lucy recoiled.
Victoria immediately moved between them.
"Don't speak to her like that."
Edward blinked.
"I'm trying to protect you from being manipulated."
"By a nine-year-old child?"
"You don't know who she is."
"Neither do you."
"I know that Anna is dead."
Victoria stared at him.
For the first time in years, she felt something stronger than grief when she heard those words.
She felt suspicion.
Not because she had suddenly discovered the truth, but because she had begun to recognize how much of her understanding had depended on accepting someone else's version of events.
"Lucy," she said gently, "did your mother give you anything besides the locket?"
The girl nodded.
"She gave me a key."
She reached into the pocket of her dress and produced a tiny brass key, worn smooth around its edges.
Victoria recognized it immediately.
Her heart began to pound.
There had been a room in the east wing of Hale House, hidden behind a section of blue-painted wall. Their grandfather had used it to store old documents, private correspondence, and papers he did not want the household staff handling.
When Victoria and Anna were children, they had discovered the room while exploring the house.
Their father had caught them inside.
He had been furious.
He locked the door, ordered them never to return, and took the key away.
Or so Victoria had believed.
Anna had somehow managed to keep a second key.
Only three people had known the room existed.
Victoria.
Anna.
And their father.
Lucy looked up at her.
"Mom said that if you didn't believe me, I should ask you about the room behind the blue wall."
Victoria turned slowly toward Edward.
He was no longer pretending to be merely annoyed.
His face had become very still.
"That room was sealed years ago," he said.
Victoria closed her fingers around the key.
"Then we won't have any trouble opening it."
"Victoria, don't be absurd."
She looked at him.
"Why are you frightened of a room you say contains nothing?"
Edward said nothing.
Behind them, the garden music continued. Guests waited uncertainly, unsure whether they should return to their conversations or remain silent.
Victoria turned to the event manager.
"Please ask everyone to continue enjoying the evening. Tell security to make sure Lucy is not approached by anyone without my permission. Arrange a quiet room for her, some food, and a telephone."
Then she looked at Edward.
"You and I are going upstairs."
He shook his head.
"I have no intention of participating in this nonsense."
"Then stay here."
Victoria took Lucy's hand.
For the first time that night, she no longer cared about the mud on the child's shoes.
She cared only about the key.
And the possibility that the truth had been waiting behind a blue wall for twenty-eight years.
Victoria had always remembered the east wing as a place of secrets.
When she and Anna were young, the corridor had seemed endless. Its walls were covered with portraits of ancestors whose names they could never remember, and its windows rattled whenever the coastal wind rose. Their father rarely allowed them to play there because the floorboards were old and the rooms had not been renovated.
The blue wall had stood at the far end of the corridor.
It was an ordinary wall, painted a faded shade of blue, except for the narrow seam that concealed the storage-room door.
Their grandfather had built the hidden room during a period of family conflict. Victoria had learned that much from overheard conversations, although no one had ever explained what the room contained.
After their grandfather died, their father ordered the door locked and the area left untouched.
When Victoria inherited control of Hale House, she had instructed the renovation contractors not to disturb that section of the east wing.
She had never admitted why.
Perhaps some part of her had always hoped that Anna might return and want to visit the place where they had hidden from the world.
Now, as Victoria climbed the staircase, she felt that hope awakening in a form she had not expected.
Edward followed several steps behind her.
"You are allowing a child to dictate your decisions," he said.
Victoria did not turn.
"I'm allowing a child to show me something she believes is important."
"She could have stolen that key."
"From whom?"
"I don't know."
"Then perhaps you should stop pretending you know what happened."
Edward's footsteps faltered.
Victoria reached the east wing and stopped before the blue wall.
The paint was duller than she remembered, with a thin crack running vertically near the corner. She inserted the key into the lock concealed behind a wooden panel.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the mechanism turned.
The door opened with a soft click.
Dust drifted through the beam of light from Victoria's phone.
The room smelled of old paper, dry wood, and the faint metallic scent of a place that had remained closed for years. Shelves lined three walls. A small desk stood beneath the window, its surface covered with a thin layer of dust.
Victoria stepped inside.
The room was almost exactly as she remembered it.
She could picture Anna sitting cross-legged on the floor, sorting through old envelopes and pretending they were detectives investigating a mystery. Anna had always loved puzzles. She believed every locked door concealed an adventure and every unanswered question was an invitation.
Victoria had been more cautious.
She had been the one to listen for footsteps and check whether their father was coming.
Anna had been the one to open the drawers.
Now the room was silent.
Edward remained in the doorway.
"There is nothing here," he said.
Victoria ignored him.
She ran her fingers along the desk.
A dark ink stain marked the corner. Three shallow scratches crossed the surface near the drawer. She remembered making them with a pocketknife while trying to open a box that their grandfather had kept locked.
The memory was so vivid that for a moment she could almost hear Anna laughing.
Victoria swallowed.
She pulled the top drawer.
It moved a fraction of an inch before catching.
Locked.
She tried the brass key, but it did not fit.
Edward sighed.
"Can we stop this now?"
Victoria examined the drawer.
The lock was old, but the wood around it had been damaged at some point. Someone had attempted to force it shut rather than repair the mechanism.
She found an old brass candlestick on a shelf and used its heavy base to strike the lock.
Edward stepped forward.
"Victoria, stop."
She struck it again.
The latch cracked.
The drawer opened.
Inside lay a bundle of envelopes wrapped in faded blue ribbon.
Victoria's hands began to tremble.
The handwriting on the first envelope was unmistakable.
Vicky.
Only Anna had called her that.
Victoria sat down abruptly, clutching the envelope as though the paper might disappear if she loosened her grip.
The date was written beneath the name.
August 19, 1998.
Three days after Anna had supposedly died.
Victoria opened it.
The first line read:
Vicky, Dad says I can never come home.
She stopped breathing.
The room seemed to tilt.
She read the sentence again, then continued.
Anna had written that their father had discovered her meeting Daniel Mercer, the son of a groundskeeper who had worked on the Hale property during the summers. Daniel was eighteen when Anna was twelve, and although their relationship had been innocent, their father had treated the friendship as a disgrace.
He believed the Mercer family was beneath them.
He believed Anna was being disobedient.
And he had discovered something far more dangerous to his authority.
Anna had found documents in the hidden room showing that their father had been selling land held in trust for both daughters. He had transferred portions of the estate through a series of private agreements, concealing the transactions from the family lawyers.
Anna had threatened to tell Victoria.
Their father had panicked.
According to the letter, he had driven Anna to a property outside Charleston and told her she would be sent to a boarding school. Instead, he arranged for her to live with distant relatives of their late mother in North Carolina.
He warned her that if she tried to contact Victoria, Daniel would be arrested for kidnapping.
Anna had been twelve.
She had believed him.
Victoria pressed the letter against her chest.
"No," she whispered.
Behind her, Edward shifted his weight.
"Let me see that."
Victoria turned sharply.
"No."
"Victoria, whatever that letter says—"
"How do you know there is something in it?"
He froze.
The question hung in the air.
Victoria rose slowly.
"You said there was nothing here. You said Anna died when she was twelve. You said this was a mistake before you even knew what Lucy had brought."
Edward's expression hardened.
"You are drawing conclusions from an old letter."
"I haven't drawn any conclusions yet."
"Then stop acting as though you have."
Victoria looked down at the paper.
The date.
The handwriting.
The details of the hidden room.
The truth was unfolding in pieces, but each piece fit more tightly than the last.
She returned to the desk and examined the bundle.
There were dozens of letters.
Some were addressed to Victoria. Others were addressed to their father. Several bore the names of people she recognized from the old family accounts.
The dates stretched across years.
And finally, February of the current year.
Anna had written to her repeatedly.