The Girl With Lillian’s Eyes
Chapter 09 - The Girl With Lillian’s Eyes
They found Ava in Milwaukee because she wanted to be found.
That was what Margaret Ellis said later, and Clara held on to it.
Not because it made the fear smaller, but because it gave Ava something Richard had tried to deny every woman in his reach.
Agency.
The convent school had released Ava to a Hastings attorney at 8:15 that morning. The attorney claimed he was transferring her to a private medical residence approved by her guardian. The school administrator, a thin woman with anxious hands, admitted over the phone that Ava had not wanted to leave.
“She left something,” Margaret said.
Clara stood in the Rossi library with Damen, Vincent, Elena, and three lawyers who seemed to multiply whenever documents were threatened.
“What?” Clara asked.
“A book.”
The administrator had found it in Ava’s room beneath a loose floorboard: a worn copy of Jane Eyre with a grocery receipt tucked inside. On the receipt, Ava had written one sentence.
If Clara comes, tell her I know about the red ledger.
Clara sat down hard.
Damen’s face tightened.
Elena whispered a prayer in Italian.
“She knows me?” Clara asked.
Margaret’s voice came through the speakerphone. “It appears your mother made sure she knew of you.”
Ava had left another clue: a bus locker number at the Milwaukee Intermodal Station.
Vincent wanted to go alone.
Clara refused.
Damen wanted to send six men.
Clara refused that too.
“I am not arriving at a bus station like a raid,” she said. “If Ava is scared, I will not be another person storming her life.”
Damen leaned against the library desk, arms crossed.
“Richard’s people may be there.”
“Then stay close,” Clara said. “Quietly.”
Something passed through his face at that.
Not triumph.
Trust, maybe.
The Milwaukee station smelled of coffee, diesel, wet wool, and old floors. Clara had never liked bus stations. They felt like places where people practiced leaving before they knew whether they could survive arrival.
She wore jeans, a gray coat, and a knit hat Rosa had insisted on pulling over her ears. The locket rested beneath her sweater. The red ledger was locked in Margaret’s office. A copy of Lillian’s note sat folded in Clara’s pocket.
Damen walked beside her, plain black coat, no visible flash. Vincent moved twenty steps behind them, invisible in the way only highly trained men could be.
Locker 117 opened with a key the administrator had mailed by courier.
Inside was a canvas backpack.
Clara opened it on a bench.
A sweater. A toothbrush. A small envelope of cash. A photo of two little girls drawn in colored pencil beneath an apple tree.
And a phone.
It was old, prepaid, nearly dead.
Damen found a charger at a newsstand.
The phone powered on with 3% battery and one saved contact.
C.
Clara’s hands went cold.
She tapped the message thread.
There were no outgoing texts.
Only one draft, unsent.
Clara, if they come before you do, I’ll leave when the bells ring twice. Mama said you’d understand red things. I don’t know if I believe in sisters, but I believe in the way she said your name.
Clara read it once.
Then again.
Damen stood beside her without breathing too loudly.
“The bells,” Clara said.
Outside the station, a church bell began to ring.
Once.
Clara looked up.
Twice.
She ran.
Not elegantly. Not like a heroine in a movie. She ran like a woman whose life had been stolen in rooms with locked doors and who had just heard one open.
Damen kept pace.
Across the street, near a row of newspaper boxes, a young woman in a navy coat stepped from behind a bus shelter.
She had dark hair.
Pale skin.
And Lillian Hastings’s eyes.
Clara stopped so suddenly Damen caught the air near her arm but did not touch.
The young woman stared back.
She looked nineteen, maybe twenty. Too thin. Chin lifted in practiced defiance. One gloved hand gripped the strap of a second backpack.
“Clara?” she asked.
The voice was not Lillian’s.
But something in it carried the same upward tilt, like bravery pretending not to tremble.
Clara nodded.
“I’m Clara.”
Ava’s eyes shifted to Damen, then back.
“Are you with him?”
The question had too much history in it for a girl so young.
Clara answered carefully.
“I’m with myself. He’s helping.”
Damen looked away, and Clara knew he understood the gift in that distinction.
Ava’s mouth tightened.
“I don’t have much time. Richard’s attorney has men at the east entrance. I slipped out near the taxis.”
Vincent appeared across the street, scanning.
Damen’s posture changed.
Clara stepped closer to Ava.
“Our mother—”
Ava flinched at the word our.
Then her face broke, just for a second.
“She told me you liked peaches,” Ava said.
Clara’s breath left her.
She had not eaten peaches since she was six because they tasted like the last summer before everything went quiet.
A black SUV turned the corner too fast.
Ava grabbed Clara’s hand.
“He isn’t just after the ledger,” she said.
“Who?” Clara asked.
“Richard.”
The SUV stopped at the curb.
Two men stepped out.
Ava shoved a small envelope into Clara’s palm.
“He’s after what Mama left inside you.”
Clara stared at her.
“What does that mean?”
But Vincent was already moving, Damen had stepped between them and the curb, and Ava’s eyes had gone wide with a fear Clara recognized too well.
May you like
The men were not looking at the ledger.
They were looking at Clara.
