Chapter 3 — The Rabbit Remembers

By my third morning in the mansion, Rosie had established a rule.

Nobody was allowed to draw rabbits before breakfast.

“They get hungry,” she explained.

“Even the ones on paper?”

“Especially those.”

Mrs. Alden placed a plate in front of her.

“Then perhaps you should demonstrate how breakfast works.”

Rosie picked up her fork.

Across the table, Jericho cut the crusts off a piece of toast without interrupting his conversation with Mateo.

I watched him slide it onto his daughter’s plate.

He didn’t ask whether she wanted it.

He already knew.

There were things I had expected from his house. Guards. Locked rooms. People who stopped speaking when he entered.

I hadn’t expected a man feared across Miami to know exactly how his daughter liked her toast.

When Rosie ran upstairs to fetch her schoolbooks, he placed a thin file beside my coffee.

“Paul Raines.”

My appetite vanished.

Mateo left us alone.

Inside were copies of the old incident report, account records, and a security log from the night I fled.

I touched the edge of the first page.

“I’m not looking at photographs of his body.”

“There aren’t any in that copy.”

I looked up.

Jericho sat across from me.

“Tell me what happened. Start before you went to his apartment.”

I took a breath.

“Celeste called. She said an account had been accessed using my credentials. I’d helped build the foundation’s approval system, so she asked me to check.”

“What did you find?”

“Transactions routed through an account I didn’t recognize. Paul had approved the reconciliation reports. I called him.”

“Did he answer?”

“He told me to come over. Said he didn’t want to discuss it on the phone.”

Jericho slid the security log closer.

“What time?”

“Just after eight.”

He pointed to an entry.

At seven forty-three, access to the disputed account had been approved from a terminal inside Blackwood headquarters.

“I wasn’t there,” I said.

“I know. Belladonna keeps employee records. Before you worked there, you had a campus job. Your supervisor confirmed your shift.”

For a moment, I couldn’t speak.

Five years earlier, I had abandoned my life because every piece of evidence seemed to point toward me.

He had found something that didn’t.

“Why wasn’t that investigated?”

“It’s one of the questions my lawyer is asking.”

I read the timestamp again.

It didn’t prove I was innocent.

But it proved that my memory wasn’t the only thing standing against the accusation.

“Celeste showed me the message at Paul’s apartment,” I said. “Not afterward. She came while I was still there.”

“How quickly?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe less.”

“Did you call her?”

“Yes.”

“And she arrived with cash and documents?”

I closed the file.

Until then, I had remembered the money as rescue.

Now I tried to imagine putting it together in ten minutes.

Jericho watched my face.

“You see the problem.”

“I see that she was prepared. I don’t know what that means yet.”

“Neither do I.”

It was an honest answer.

I needed it more than reassurance.

Dr. Elias Vane arrived that afternoon.

Mrs. Alden introduced him as Rosie’s therapist. He was neatly dressed, with silver at his temples and a voice that seemed designed never to disturb a quiet room.

“So you’re the new companion.”

“For now.”

“Rosie forms attachments quickly.”

“She also notices when people leave.”

His smile tightened.

“We’re working on that.”

Rosie waited beside the terrace doors.

When Vane held out a hand, she tucked both of hers behind her back.

“Can Lennox stay?”

“Today is a private session, sweetheart.”

I crouched beside her.

“I’ll be in the next room. If you need me, call.”

Vane looked down at us.

“It’s important that she learn she can manage difficult feelings independently.”

“She’s seven,” I said. “Knowing where I am won’t prevent that.”

His gaze lingered on me.

Then he guided Rosie into the sitting room.

As he adjusted his cuff, I noticed a silver rabbit.

One ear was shorter than the other.

I stood very still.

When the session ended, Vane asked to speak to me alone.

“Rosie may tell you things about her mother.”

“What things?”

“She has difficulty accepting the loss. Sometimes she insists she has seen Celeste.”

“Where?”

“That isn’t useful to explore.”

“It might be useful if she’s frightened.”

“Encouraging a fantasy can make grief worse.”

He said it gently.

He also stepped between me and the sitting-room door.

“Please leave that work to me.”

Over his shoulder, I saw Rosie sitting on the sofa with her hands folded.

She was looking at his cuff links.

The note was under my pillow.

I found it while looking for the paperback I’d brought from home.

A blue rabbit filled the center of the page.

Beneath it, six words had been pressed so hard into the paper that I could feel them on the other side.

You should have stayed erased, Nora.

I didn’t pack.

I didn’t hide it.

I carried it straight to Jericho.

He was speaking to Mateo when I entered his office. Both men stopped.

“Someone has been in my room.”

Jericho took the paper.

His face changed.

“When?”

“I found it a minute ago.”

Mateo moved toward the door.

Jericho gave three brief instructions. Gates closed. Staff remained where they were. Nobody deleted or overwrote the camera recordings.

Then he looked at me.

“Did you show this to anyone else?”

“No.”

“Has anyone outside this house contacted you?”

“No. And before you ask, I haven’t told anyone about Nora.”

His eyes lifted from the note.

“Neither have I.”

Vane knew Celeste.

Vane had been near Rosie.

Vane wore the rabbit.

I told Jericho all three things.

He listened without interrupting.

“His appointment ended before lunch,” he said.

“That doesn’t tell us when the note was placed.”

“No.”

“And it doesn’t tell us whether he had help.”

Mateo returned.

“The corridor camera shows no unauthorized entry.”

I looked toward the open door.

“Then someone authorized entered.”

A crash came from upstairs.

We ran.

Rosie stood outside her bedroom, barefoot among pieces of a shattered vase.

Jericho reached her first.

“Don’t move.”

He lifted her clear of the broken porcelain.

“I heard the window,” she whispered.

Mateo entered her room.

I followed as far as the doorway.

The balcony door was closed, but one side window stood open. A blue rabbit had been drawn on the white sill in a dark red smear.

I caught Mateo’s arm before he touched it.

“Keep Rosie out.”

Behind me, Jericho turned her face against his shoulder.

“Look at me, sweetheart. Not the room.”

She started crying then.

Quietly at first.

Then hard enough that he had to sit on the hallway floor with her.

I knelt beside them.

Rosie reached for my sleeve.

I let her hold it.

That evening, they moved me into the room beside hers.

Guards stood at both ends of the corridor.

I waited until Rosie slept, then found Jericho in the kitchen with the old file open beside an untouched coffee.

“The window?” I asked.

“A balcony sensor was disabled during scheduled maintenance.”

“By whom?”

“We’re checking.”

I sat across from him.

He pushed the file toward me.

“My lawyer found the message Celeste showed you.”

I recognized the formatting immediately.

My hands tightened.

“The authorization number belongs to a shipping approval issued two days earlier,” he said. “Someone copied it into a different message.”

I read the attached original.

The destination. The date. A routine cargo release.

Nothing about me.

Nothing about an order to find or kill me.

For five years, I had heard Celeste’s voice whenever a car slowed outside my apartment.

Jericho knows. You have to run.

I looked at him.

“You didn’t send it.”

“No.”

The relief hurt.

It opened a space I didn’t know what to put inside.

“Your reputation made it easy to believe,” I said.

“I know.”

He didn’t excuse himself.

For the first time since entering his house, I felt I could sit opposite him without preparing an escape.

A small voice came from the doorway.

“Lennox?”

Rosie stood there in her nightgown, holding her sketchbook.

I went to her.

“Another dream?”

She nodded.

“Mommy was in the glass room.”

Jericho rose behind me.

“What glass room, sweetheart?”

Rosie looked at him, frightened.

“The one under the fish.”

I kept my voice even.

“Did you draw it?”

She opened the notebook.

Rabbits.

Page after page of them.

Different ears. Different tails. Facing different directions.

I had thought they were variations on a favorite animal.

Now I saw the dates written in the corners.

The deliberate order.

Celeste and I had invented a way to pass notes during lectures. Ear positions stood for groups of letters. Tail shapes separated words.

I hadn’t used it in years.

“May I borrow these?” I asked.

Rosie hesitated, then handed me the book.

Jericho called Mrs. Alden to stay with her while I carried it to the table.

I arranged the dated pages, wrote the old key from memory, and began translating.

The first message took three attempts.

Then the words emerged.

GLASS ROOM.

The next pointed beneath the fish.

The third gave a number.

Nineteen.

Jericho leaned over the table, close enough that I felt his sleeve against my shoulder.

“Can you read the last one?”

It was a separate instruction.

Not a location.

I drew a line beneath the first word.

COME.

The second followed.

WITHOUT.

I reached for the final sheet.

There were four letters left.

A person’s name.

Across from me, Jericho stopped breathing as I put my pencil to the paper.