The Other Girl
Chapter 07 - The Other Girl
No one spoke for several seconds because some truths enter a room too strangely to be greeted.
The other girl.
Madeline knelt in front of Rose. “Sweetheart, what do you mean?”
Rose looked suddenly uncertain, as if adult attention had made the memory shy.
“In the picture place.”
“What picture place?”
“The box with Daddy’s songs.”
Madeline covered her mouth.
“The music box?”
Rose nodded. “There was a little movie. Ava and not-Ava were crying.”
Ava stepped back.
“I don’t have a twin,” she said.
Madeline looked at me with a terror I had seen only once before: in a mother outside an operating room.
“No,” she said. “That’s impossible.”
Impossible is a word people use when they do not yet have enough evidence to surrender.
I turned to Paul. “Find the music box.”
Madeline shook her head. “Mercer took it.”
“The original?”
“Yes.”
“And the house?”
“He changed the locks after claiming it was part of the estate review.”
Paul was already moving. “Address?”
Madeline gave it.
“I’ll send men.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll go.”
Ethan immediately said, “I’m coming.”
“No.”
“You heard Ava. You heard Rose. This is about the fire too.”
“It is also about men who throw keys through windows.”
“Then I should definitely not stay here with all the windows.”
Teenagers survive partly because parents fear prison.
I looked at Madeline. “You and the girls stay with Sylvia and three guards.”
She looked like she wanted to argue, then looked at her daughters and didn’t.
“Bring back whatever Henry left,” she said.
I nodded.
She caught my sleeve as I turned.
“And Alexander?”
I looked down at her hand.
She released me quickly.
“Be careful,” she said.
It had been a long time since someone outside my family said those words to me and meant the man, not the usefulness of him.
Madeline’s old house sat on a quiet street in Evanston, all trimmed hedges and respectable lies. Mercer had posted private security at the front gate.
They were not good private security.
Paul handled the cameras. Ethan picked the side lock in under forty seconds, which I intended to address as a parenting failure later.
Inside, the house smelled closed. Furniture covered in sheets. Family photographs missing from walls, leaving pale rectangles behind.
“Mercer stripped it,” Ethan said.
“No. He curated it.”
The difference mattered.
We found Henry’s office empty except for one desk too heavy to remove and one old rug with faded blue flowers. Ethan stood in the doorway, quiet.
“What?”
“I know this room.”
“You were never here.”
“I saw it in the video.”
“What video?”
He looked at me. “The one Rose called the little movie.”
We pulled up the rug.
A square outline had been cut into the floorboards beneath.
Paul worked the hidden latch. Inside lay a metal box.
Not locked.
That bothered me.
Inside were documents, a small hard drive, three photographs, and a child’s hospital bracelet.
Name: LUCIA VALE.
Date of birth identical to Ava’s.
Ethan whispered a curse.
I lifted the bracelet carefully.
“Madeline had twins.”
“No,” Paul said quietly. “According to every public record, she delivered one daughter.”
“Then someone made another disappear.”
The photographs confirmed it.
Madeline in a hospital bed, exhausted and smiling, holding two newborns.
Henry standing beside her with tears in his eyes.
Another picture: Ava as a toddler beside another little girl so like her they could have been reflections, except the other child had a crescent birthmark near her left eye.
The third photograph showed Henry holding both girls outside the river warehouse.
On the back, he had written:
If I fail, find Alexander Hayes. His son is proof they can be saved.
Ethan sat down on the floor.
I had no words for him.
Some debts are too large to name.
Paul connected the hard drive to a secure tablet. Files appeared. Videos. Scans. Audio.
One file was labeled MERCER_JULIAN_TRANSFER.
Another: LUCIA_ALIVE.
My hand stopped.
Paul looked at me.
I opened it.
The video showed a little girl around three years old sitting at a table in a room with red walls. She had Ava’s face and the crescent mark.
An unseen woman placed a cup of milk in front of her.
The child looked toward the camera.
“My name is Lucia,” she said carefully, as if taught. “My mommy is sick and can’t take care of me.”
Ethan stood and walked away from the tablet.
I watched the timestamp.
Four years ago.
One year after Henry’s death.
Lucia had survived.
Maybe still did.
A phone rang inside the desk.
All three of us froze.
It was an old landline hidden inside a drawer, connected though the house was supposedly empty.
Paul looked at me.
I answered.
For two seconds, there was only breathing.
Then a voice I had buried years ago said, “Hello, brother.”
Julian.
My grip tightened until the plastic cracked.
“Where is the child?”
He laughed softly.
“Which one, Alexander? That family seems to misplace them.”
“Where is Lucia?”
“Still asking the wrong question.”
“Then correct me.”
A pause.
When Julian spoke again, the amusement was gone.
“Ask Madeline why Henry was at the warehouse with both girls the night it burned.”
The line went dead.
Ethan stared at me.
I looked at the hospital bracelet in my hand and felt the old warehouse smoke crawl back into my lungs.
May you like
Because whatever Madeline had lost, whatever Henry had hidden, whatever Mercer wanted—
it had begun with a child everyone had been told never existed.
