Chapter 10 - The Girl Who Remembered Everything
Miriam had been eleven when Nathan disappeared.
Nathan trusted her because she could see through Cross’s conditioning.
She taught him something simple:
Write things down before adults convince you they happened differently.
That explained Nathan’s journals.
Margaret had one.
She brought it from her car.
Nathan’s final entry before disappearing:
M knows the second route. If we get separated, she knows where I’m going.
Second route.
Not the storm tunnel exit police searched.
Another route.
Railway service tunnels.
Nathan could have left the city unseen.
I asked Aaron where they led.
“Old freight depot.”
Closed twenty-eight years ago.
Daniel said:
“Then why is Miriam resurfacing now?”
I knew.
“Because somebody found Nathan.”
Silence.
The fake messages.
The apartment surveillance.
The deliberate power outage.
The letters.
They weren’t designed only to frighten me.
They were tests.
Someone wanted to know how much each of us remembered.
Daniel.
Me.
Aaron.
Margaret.
Even Laura.
Then I remembered the night before.
The knock.
I told Emily and Leo to stay inside because I recognized the man in the hallway.
Not his face.
His necklace.
Split silver circle.
He said:
“Sarah, you wanted the truth about Nathan.”
I asked who he was.
He answered:
“You knew me before you learned my name.”
I thought he was threatening me.
Now I understood.
Subject M had owned the necklace.
But the person outside my apartment was male.
“He was wearing Miriam’s necklace.”
Aaron’s eyes widened.
“Then he knew her.”
Daniel asked:
“Could it have been Nathan?”
I closed my eyes.
Maybe.
Nathan would be forty-three.
The man had looked around that age.
But something bothered me.
Emily said she heard me scream her name.
Why?
Because when I stepped into the hallway, the man said something that terrified me:
“Emily looks exactly like Miriam did.”
He knew my daughter.
He had been watching her.
That was when I screamed Emily’s name and ordered her to lock the door.
Then the lights went out.
When they returned in the hallway, the man was gone.
I followed the stairs.
A door opened.
Someone grabbed my wrist.
Not violently.
Urgently.
A woman whispered:
“If you want your children alive, stop following him.”
“Who?”
She answered:
“Nathan.”
Everyone went silent.
Daniel whispered:
“Who was the woman?”
I looked at Aaron.
“She looked like you.”
His knees almost buckled.
“Miriam.”
I nodded.
“Your sister is alive.”
Aaron began crying.
May you like
Then I gave him the part I hadn’t told anyone yet.
“She said Nathan came back wrong.”
