Chapter 1 - He Looked Exactly Like You
Claire Whitmore was angry when she turned toward Eleanor.
She was horrified when Eleanor disappeared from in front of her.
One moment, the sixty-eight-year-old woman stood at the top of the sweeping marble staircase, gripping the wrought-iron railing during an argument about Noah.
The next, Eleanor's heel slipped.
Her hands shot toward the railing and missed.
“Eleanor!”
Eleanor tumbled down the cream-marble steps and landed on her side at the bottom.
Claire raced barefoot after her.
By the time Ethan Cole ran into the foyer, Claire was already kneeling beside Eleanor with shaking hands.
“What happened?”
“I don't know. She just—”
A small sound interrupted her.
Everyone looked up.
Seven-year-old Noah stood at the top landing.
His fingers were wrapped around the railing.
His face was almost white.
Claire rose.
“Noah... what did you see?”
The boy flinched when she approached.
That stopped Claire immediately.
Noah pointed toward the place where Eleanor had been standing.
“Grandma wasn’t alone.”
Claire turned.
The hallway was empty.
Ethan climbed several steps, but Noah hurried down instead and grabbed his father's sleeve.
“Who else was there?” Ethan asked.
Noah reached into his pocket.
A gold cufflink dropped into Ethan's palm.
Ethan stared.
Then slowly looked at his own shirt.
His left cuff held an identical piece.
Claire saw it.
Her face changed.
The cufflinks were not ordinary.
Ethan’s late father, Henry Cole, had commissioned only one pair for Ethan’s twenty-fifth birthday. Each bore the tiny intertwined initials H.C. on the reverse.
Ethan turned Noah’s cufflink over.
H.C.
His breathing stopped.
Noah whispered:
“He looked exactly like you.”
A door closed upstairs.
Claire grabbed the railing.
“He’s still here.”
Ethan ran upward.
He searched every bedroom.
Every bathroom.
The library.
Guest wing.
No one.
Security arrived within minutes.
No broken windows.
No forced doors.
No unidentified vehicle at the gate.
But upstairs, beside the place Eleanor had fallen, Ethan found something.
A faint smear of blood on the railing.
Not Eleanor’s.
And beneath it lay a single black thread.
Claire stared at it.
“What was he wearing?”
Noah swallowed.
“A black coat.”
Ethan looked toward his son.
“Did he push Grandma?”
Noah's eyes filled with tears.
He shook his head.
Then he said something far more confusing.
“Grandma tried to grab him.”
At the hospital, Eleanor regained full consciousness.
Her injuries were painful but not life-threatening.
Ethan sat beside her.
“Mom, Noah says another man was upstairs.”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“Did he cause your fall?”
“No.”
“Who was he?”
Eleanor's breathing changed.
Ethan placed the second cufflink beside her hand.
She opened her eyes.
The instant she saw it, fear replaced pain.
“Where did you get that?”
“Noah.”
Eleanor gripped Ethan's wrist.
“Listen to me.”
“What?”
“If that man comes back, don't ask him why he looks like you.”
Ethan stared.
“Why?”
May you like
Eleanor whispered:
“Ask him why your father gave him the other cufflink.”
