Chapter 2 - Ava’s Voice
Police emptied the laundry basket.
There was no child inside.
The hand belonged to a realistic medical training mannequin.
The voice came from a small hidden speaker.
Emma stood motionless as detectives lifted layer after layer of clothing from the basket.
At the bottom was a sealed red plastic pouch.
The pouch had leaked.
That was what Lucy had touched.
The liquid was not blood.
It was industrial textile marking dye.
Concentrated enough to sting skin.
Not lethal.
But definitely not something a child should have touched.
Emma turned toward Eleanor.
“You knew this basket was dangerous.”
“I knew it shouldn’t be here.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
Emma picked up the speaker.
A button was taped beneath it.
Detective pressed play.
Ava’s voice filled the kitchen.
“Emma… if you hear this, don’t trust what Eleanor tells you about me.”
Emma went pale.
Ava had died at age eleven.
At least that was what Emma had believed.
There had been a fire at a private care facility.
Three children died.
Ava’s body had supposedly been among them.
Closed casket.
Identification through medical records.
Emma had buried a box she never opened.
The recording continued.
“I didn’t die in that fire.”
Emma gripped the counter.
Lucy had been taken upstairs with a neighbor, but Emma could still hear her crying faintly.
Eleanor sat down.
Emma faced her.
“You knew?”
Eleanor said nothing.
“You knew Ava survived?”
Still nothing.
Emma slammed her hand onto counter.
“ANSWER ME.”
Eleanor whispered:
“I knew she might have.”
“Six years?”
“I didn’t know where she was.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Detective asked about basket.
Eleanor admitted she brought it from a storage unit that morning.
Whose unit?
Her late husband’s.
Emma’s father, Robert Bennett.
Why?
She claimed she was clearing old belongings.
But the basket had been packed recently.
The dye pouch had a manufacture date from three weeks earlier.
Someone had staged it.
Then one final recording played.
Ava’s voice again:
“If Lucy touched the red dye, then someone moved the basket too early.”
Emma stared.
“Too early?”
Then Ava said:
“Mom, the hand is fake.”
Emma closed her eyes in relief.
“But what it points to is real.”
Pause.
“Find Room 17.”
Eleanor immediately stood.
“No.”
Emma turned.
“What is Room 17?”
May you like
Eleanor’s face went white.
“The place Ava was never supposed to remember.”
