Chapter 3 - The Room Above the Nursery
I reached the staircase before anyone could stop me.
Elena caught up halfway to the second floor.
“Slow down.”
“My son stopped crying.”
“Running into an unsecured room will not help him.”
“That is my child.”
“And that is exactly why you need to enter like a father instead of a weapon.”
Her words struck where they needed to.
I forced myself to reduce my speed.
The hallway at the top of the stairs stretched toward the east wing.
The nursery door stood open.
A lamp cast a soft yellow circle across the carpet.
Ruth Ellison sat in a rocking chair with Noah against her chest.
His eyes were closed.
One tiny hand rested against her collar.
He was breathing.
I crossed the room and took him from her.
Ruth surrendered him without protest.
Noah weighed almost nothing against the equipment I had carried overseas.
Yet I had never held anything that made me feel more aware of my own strength.
His face was flushed from crying.
A small crease crossed his forehead.
He smelled like milk and clean cotton.
Emily should have been standing beside me.
The thought almost dropped me to my knees.
Instead, I held Noah closer.
“Why did he stop crying?”
Ruth’s eyes moved toward the baby monitor.
“The recording played.”
“You recognized Emily’s voice?”
“Yes.”
“You have heard it before?”
Ruth nodded.
“Three nights ago.”
Elena closed the nursery door behind us.
“Start at the beginning.”
Ruth looked toward me.
“I was hired six weeks ago.”
“By whom?”
“Mrs. Mercer.”
My mother.
“She told me Emily’s pregnancy had become difficult.”
Ruth’s hands twisted together.
“She said the family needed someone experienced with newborns.”
“Were you here when Noah was born?”
“No.”
“When did you first see him?”
“The morning after.”
“Where was Emily?”
Ruth’s eyes filled with tears.
“They told me she had died during the night.”
“Did you see her body?”
“Not then.”
“Who gave you the baby?”
“Caleb.”
I adjusted Noah against my chest.
“What condition was he in?”
“He was clean.”
“He had been wrapped in a gray blanket.”
“He was hungry, but otherwise he seemed healthy.”
“Did he have a hospital bracelet?”
“No.”
Elena moved toward the baby monitor.
It was an expensive digital model with a camera mounted above the crib.
“Where did the recording come from?”
“I don’t know.”
Ruth stood.
“The first time it happened, I was changing Noah.”
“The monitor turned on by itself.”
“Emily said the same sentence.”
“Then the screen displayed twelve.”
“Room 12,” Elena said.
Ruth nodded.
“I told Mrs. Mercer.”
“What did she do?”
“She took the monitor downstairs.”
“Yet it is here now.”
“Caleb returned it the next morning.”
“Did he explain why?”
“He said I was imagining things because I was tired.”
Elena examined the monitor’s power cable.
“This is not connected to the home network.”
She turned the unit over.
A small memory-card slot was hidden beneath a rubber cover.
The slot was empty.
“Someone programmed the recording locally.”
I looked around the nursery.
The room had been prepared with expensive furniture, painted clouds, and shelves filled with toys.
Emily had chosen none of it.
She had planned a simple room with pale green walls.
She wanted framed maps above the crib.
She said our son should grow up looking at the world as something to understand rather than conquer.
Someone had erased every choice she made.
“Where are Emily’s things?”
Ruth pointed toward the adjoining dressing room.
“Mrs. Mercer had most of them removed.”
“When?”
“The day after Emily died.”
I handed Noah back to Ruth reluctantly.
“Stay with Elena.”
Elena moved in front of me.
“We search together.”
The dressing room door was locked.
Ruth said she had never been given the key.
I studied the frame.
The lock was new.
The door was old.
One controlled strike near the latch opened it.
Elena gave me a disapproving look.
“I was going to request the key.”
“We already know my mother does not enjoy giving answers.”
The room beyond smelled of dust and lavender.
Cardboard boxes filled the shelves.
Most were marked with dates from my childhood.
A narrow staircase at the rear led upward.
I had forgotten about it.
The estate had been built in sections over nearly a century.
Certain rooms were connected through servants’ corridors and storage spaces that no longer appeared on modern floor plans.
“Where does that go?” Elena asked.
“The old schoolroom.”
“No one has used it since Caleb and I were children.”
We climbed.
The wooden steps creaked beneath our weight.
At the top, we found another locked door.
This one opened inward when Elena pressed the handle.
The room beyond had not been abandoned.
A folding table stood beneath the windows.
Medical supplies had been arranged across it.
There were sealed syringes.
Disposable gloves.
Two oxygen canisters.
Stacks of absorbent pads.
A portable fetal monitor rested inside an open case.
Elena photographed everything before entering.
“This was a delivery room.”
I stared at the narrow bed positioned against the wall.
Leather straps hung from its sides.
The marks on Emily’s wrists returned to my mind.
I heard her voice from the monitor again.
Do not let them take Noah.
My hands tightened.
Elena noticed.
“Keep breathing.”
“They restrained her here.”
“We need evidence before we decide that.”
“There are straps on the bed.”
“There are also medical supplies.”
“Whoever did this wanted the appearance of medical care.”
Elena moved around the room carefully.
A waste container stood in the corner.
Inside it were bloodstained medical pads, empty medication vials, and a torn piece of blue fabric.
The material appeared to match the fibers beneath Emily’s fingernails.
Dr. Chen would confirm it.
Elena examined the vials without touching them.
“Oxytocin.”
“Lidocaine.”
“Midazolam.”
She stopped.
The last vial had no printed label.
Only a handwritten letter.
K.
“What is that?”
“We will let the laboratory answer.”
A sound came from the corridor behind us.
Elena turned.
I moved toward the doorway.
A shadow crossed the lower staircase.
“Who is there?”
No answer came.
I descended quickly.
The dressing room was empty when I reached it.
The nursery door stood open.
Ruth remained in the rocking chair.
Noah was safe in her arms.
The baby monitor lay facedown on the carpet.
Elena picked it up.
“Did someone come in?”
Ruth’s face had gone pale.
“Caleb.”
“What did he want?”
“He asked whether Daniel had found the room.”
I walked into the hallway.
Caleb was already disappearing around the corner.
“Caleb.”
He ran.
I pursued him toward the west staircase.
He reached the landing and knocked over a decorative table behind him.
The table shattered across the steps.
I cleared it and caught him near the gallery.
I drove him against the wall without striking him.
He raised both hands.
“Daniel, listen.”
“You knew about that room.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Emily gave birth there.”
“I did not know until afterward.”
“You brought Noah to Ruth.”
His face changed.
“She told you.”
“Why was my son in your arms?”
“Because no one else could take him.”
“Where was Emily?”
Caleb looked toward the stairs.
Lieutenant Kerr appeared below.
Elena approached behind me.
“Answer him,” she said.
Caleb’s voice dropped.
“She was gone.”
“That is not an answer,” I said.
“It is the only one I have.”
Elena directed Kerr to take Caleb downstairs.
Before they moved, Caleb looked at me.
“There is something else in that room.”
“What?”
He swallowed.
“I tried to destroy it.”
Elena’s expression hardened.
“What did you destroy?”
“A camera.”
“Where?”
“Above the bed.”
“Why?”
“Because Mother told me to.”
My mother’s earlier statement returned.
I protected her more than you ever knew.
We searched the schoolroom again.
A section of plaster above the bed had been repaired recently.
Behind it, Elena found electrical wiring and an empty mounting bracket.
The camera itself was gone.
However, whoever removed it had overlooked the narrow transmission cable running into the attic.
We followed the cable through insulation until it reached a small recording unit hidden behind a wooden beam.
The unit’s hard drive had been removed.
The housing still contained a manufacturer’s serial number.
Elena photographed it.
“There may be cloud backups.”
“Can you recover them?”
“Maybe.”
A faint sound came from beneath the folding table.
I knelt.
One floorboard was loose.
I lifted it carefully.
A plastic bag had been concealed in the space below.
Inside rested a woman’s blue nightgown.
Several buttons were missing.
One sleeve had been torn.
The material matched the fragment inside the waste container.
There was also a hospital identification bracelet.
I expected to see Emily’s name.
Instead, the bracelet read:
BABY GIRL.
MOTHER: JANE DOE 46.
DATE OF BIRTH: THREE DAYS AGO.
I stared at the date.
It was the same night Noah had been born.
Elena looked toward the single narrow bed.
“Two infants were delivered in this house.”
A second bracelet lay beneath the first.
This one contained a handwritten note.
HE TOOK HER THROUGH THE CHAPEL.
Elena held it toward the light.
“Emily wrote this.”
I recognized the slant of the letters.
The way she crossed the letter T.
The sharp tail beneath the Y.
“She was alive long enough to hide it.”
A soft click came from the far wall.
One of the built-in cabinets shifted open by several inches.
Cold air moved through the room.
Behind the cabinet was a dark passage leading downward.
From somewhere below us came the distant sound of a woman crying.
May you like
Then a voice whispered through the passage.
“Please don’t let them come back.”
