Chapter 6 - The Nights Ethan Couldn't Remember
Ethan had episodes.
Claire knew that much.
She had seen two.
He called them migraines.
Once, after a charity dinner, Ethan woke in the guest room and could not remember driving home.
Another time, he lost forty minutes between leaving his office and entering a restaurant.
Doctors blamed stress.
Ethan never told Claire the episodes began before Rachel died.
Rachel documented them.
Dates.
Times.
Behavior.
After certain Mercer board meetings, Ethan returned home disoriented.
Sometimes unusually aggressive.
Sometimes frightened.
Once he asked Rachel:
“Did I hurt someone?”
The next morning he remembered nothing.
Claire's certainty fractured.
Was Ethan hiding crimes?
Or had something happened to him?
The red-room files contained medical reports.
Blood tests.
Sedative compounds.
A drug named Somnirex.
Approved for short-term procedural use.
In high repeated doses it could cause memory disruption.
Mercer rehabilitation clinics purchased enormous quantities.
Ethan stared.
“I never took this.”
Rachel had written:
CHECK HIS WHISKEY.
Ethan stopped breathing.
His father, Charles Mercer, had insisted on one family ritual.
Every Thursday after board meetings, Ethan drank a glass of whiskey with him.
Charles had died five years earlier.
One year after Rachel.
Claire looked at the photograph wall.
The mystery suddenly had an older shadow.
Maybe Noah was not the beginning.
Maybe Ethan wasn't either.
Lily tugged Claire's sleeve.
“Are you still mad at me?”
Claire crouched.
“Yes.”
Lily's face fell.
“And I'm glad you're safe.”
Both could be true.
“You lied about me.”
“I needed Daddy to stop the wedding.”
“You could have hurt yourself.”
“I unplugged it.”
“And someone came in after you.”
Lily's eyes changed.
Fear.
“Uncle Noah.”
“You saw him?”
Lily nodded.
“He told me to get out.”
Claire froze.
“He didn't push you inside?”
“No.”
That contradicted the footage.
“What happened?”
Lily explained.
Noah entered.
Saw her inside.
Panicked.
He tried to pull her out.
Then heard someone coming.
He whispered:
“Stay quiet.”
He closed the door.
Not locked.
Then hid.
Another person entered.
Lily could not see them clearly through the glass.
That person activated something.
Water entered.
The drum moved briefly.
Then Ethan arrived.
“So Noah didn't trap you?”
Lily shook her head.
Claire realized how quickly they had built certainty from incomplete footage.
The scarred hand closing the door belonged to Noah.
But closing the door had not been the attack.
Someone came afterward.
“Who?”
“I couldn't see.”
“Man or woman?”
Lily thought.
“Woman.”
Claire's pulse changed.
“Did she say anything?”
Lily nodded.
“What?”
The child looked at Ethan.
“She said, ‘Rachel should've taught you to stay dead.’”
Silence.
Claire felt gooseflesh rise.
That was not something said to Lily.
It was said about Rachel.
Or to someone who looked like Rachel.
Claire asked:
“Did the woman think you were your mother?”
Lily shook her head.
“She wasn't talking to me.”
“Then who?”
Lily pointed toward the doorway of the red room.
A woman stood there.
Elegant.
Silver-haired.
Around sixty.
May you like
Ethan's face drained of color.
“Mom?”
