Chapter 3 - The Red Cedar Box
I left the gala through the service entrance.
Not because Celeste ordered me.
Because Lucia had heard enough.
Adrian followed us into the cold.
“Emily.”
I kept walking.
“Please.”
That word stopped me.
Billionaires probably didn’t use it often.
“What?”
“I want to see the box.”
“You want to investigate my dead mother.”
“I want to know whether she was my aunt.”
Lucia looked between us.
I hated that this was happening around her.
So I set one condition.
“No cameras. No security team. No Celeste.”
Adrian agreed immediately.
That surprised me.
Twenty minutes later, we were inside my apartment in Jamaica Plain.
Adrian Vale looked absurd standing beneath a ceiling stain I couldn’t afford to repair.
Lucia changed into pajamas while I pulled the red cedar box from the top of my closet.
I had avoided it for two years.
Grief makes objects dangerous.
Inside were costume jewelry, recital programs, old receipts, photographs, and a stack of letters tied with blue ribbon.
Then Lucia reached beneath a folded shawl.
“This.”
She pulled out the photograph.
Same piano.
Same Eleanor.
Same Vivian.
Same scratched-out face.
Except my mother’s copy had not been damaged.
Rosalind Vale stared directly at the camera.
She looked like me.
Not vaguely.
Enough that Adrian sat down.
“Oh my God.”
On the back, in blue ink:
For my Rose and Vivian. Whatever happens, the song belongs to both of you. — Mama
Adrian looked toward the photograph from the gala now displayed on his phone.
“The handwriting matches my grandmother’s.”
My hands were numb.
I found another photograph.
Rose at perhaps eighteen.
Pregnant.
Beside her was a young man whose face had been torn away.
“That’s impossible.”
Adrian stared.
“What?”
“My mother told me she had me at twenty-two.”
If the dates written on the photograph were correct, Rose had been seventeen.
Meaning another part of my childhood story was false.
Then I found an envelope.
SEALED UNTIL EMILY ASKS ABOUT BOSTON.
My mother had written my name.
My hands shook so badly Adrian offered to open it.
“No.”
I tore it myself.
Inside was a key.
A bank key.
And one sentence.
If the Vales ever find you, trust Eleanor before you trust any man carrying our last name.
Adrian read it.
His face tightened.
“That includes me.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t argue.
Below the sentence was another:
Never trust a Winthrop with the falling star.
Adrian went still.
“Celeste.”
“Maybe her father.”
“Both.”
Then Lucia appeared in the hallway carrying her rabbit.
“Mama, Grandma said something else about the song.”
I stared.
“When?”
“Before she got sick.”
“What?”
Lucia thought carefully.
“She said if rich people ever hear it, stop before the third star.”
Adrian turned toward me.
“There’s a third?”
“Yes.”
Lucia had only performed one.
The full dance contained three falling-star movements.
My mother always stopped the music after the third and restarted from the beginning.
I had assumed it was choreography.
Adrian whispered:
“What happens after the third star?”
I thought back.
A strange sequence.
Three steps left.
Two right.
Turn toward the piano.
Then point.
Point.
At what?
I suddenly remembered Rose’s studio.
Whenever we practiced the last sequence, she always positioned the piano in exactly the same place.
Against the north wall.
She wasn’t teaching me to point at an imaginary audience.
She had been teaching me to point toward something.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A man spoke.
“Ms. Bennett?”
“Yes?”
“This is Boston First Trust. We’ve received notice that a dormant safe-deposit box associated with Rose Bennett has been accessed.”
My chest tightened.
“I haven’t accessed it.”
Silence.
Then:
“Someone used your identification twenty minutes ago.”
Adrian was already calling security.
The bank employee continued.
“There’s another problem.”
“What?”
“The person currently inside the vault signed in as Emily Bennett.”
I looked at Adrian.
He looked at me.
May you like
Then the caller whispered:
“Ms. Bennett… she looks exactly like you.”
