Marcus unwrapped it and found two deep cuts across her palm. Dirt had entered the wounds.
His voice changed.
“Who allowed this to happen?”
Sabine released an impatient breath.
“She refused to wear the gloves I gave her.”
“There were no gloves,” Elara whispered.
Sabine turned sharply.
“Elara.”
The warning in her voice was unmistakable.
Marcus had heard Sabine speak that way to employees, contractors, and journalists. He had never heard her use that voice with his daughter.
He placed himself between them.
“Go to your room, Elara.”
The child did not move.
Marcus lowered his voice.
“You’re not in trouble. Take the eastern stairs and lock your door. I’ll come to you in a few minutes.”
Elara looked toward the uncovered mosaic.
“I can’t leave it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No.” Her eyes filled with tears. “She’ll destroy it.”
Sabine laughed once.
“This is absurd.”
Marcus turned to her.
“What will you destroy?”
“Nothing. She has filled her head with fantasies.”
Elara reached beneath her apron and removed a narrow leather notebook.
Sabine moved forward.
“Give me that.”
Elara stepped back.
Marcus held out his hand.
“Give it to me instead.”
The notebook was old and swollen from moisture. A silver emblem had been pressed into its cover: a bird with open wings beneath seven stars.
Marcus recognized the symbol.
It had appeared on his mother’s stationery.
“Where did you find this?”
“In the wall behind the dead jasmine,” Elara said. “Grandmother left it.”
“That’s impossible. My mother died eleven years ago.”
“She wrote my name inside.”
Marcus opened the notebook.
The first pages contained sketches of plants, fragments of poetry, and maps of the estate. Farther inside, the handwriting became hurried.
On one page, written in dark green ink, were four words.
FOR ELARA, WHEN SHE LISTENS.
Marcus read them again.
His daughter had been an infant when his mother died. At the time, no one outside the immediate family had known what the child would be named.
He looked at Sabine.
She had become very still.
“You’ve seen this before,” he said.
“No.”
“You knew it existed.”
“Of course not.”
Elara pointed toward the mosaic.
“The notebook says the bird sings when the seventh star is touched.”
Marcus looked down.
Seven blue glass stars surrounded the golden bird. Six were smooth. The seventh, almost hidden beneath the bird’s wing, contained a small circular hollow.
Elara pulled a chain from beneath her dress.
A bronze pendant rested against her chest.
It was shaped like a star.
Marcus remembered it immediately.
His mother had worn it every day of her life.
After her funeral, the pendant had disappeared.
“Where did you get that?”
“Mrs. Vale gave it to me.”
Agnes Vale had been the oldest employee at Hawthorne House. She had served Marcus’s family for more than forty years. Three months earlier, Sabine had told him that Agnes had retired and moved north to live with relatives.
“Mrs. Vale is gone,” Sabine said. “The child is confused.”
“She gave it to me before you sent her away,” Elara replied.
Marcus looked at Sabine.
“Sent her away?”
“She was stealing.”
“Agnes Vale?”
“I found jewelry in her room.”
“What jewelry?”
Sabine hesitated.
Elara raised the bronze star.
“This.”
Thunder rolled above the glass ceiling.
Marcus took the pendant and pressed it into the hollow within the mosaic.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then a mechanism moved beneath the floor.
The golden bird rotated.
A section of the mosaic lifted with a soft grinding sound, revealing a narrow compartment lined with copper.
Inside rested a black wooden cylinder and a sealed envelope.
Sabine lunged toward it.
Marcus caught her arm.
Her calm expression shattered.
“Don’t open that.”
The words escaped before she could stop them.
Marcus released her slowly.
“Why?”
“It could be dangerous. Mold, chemicals, anything.”
“You just told me you didn’t know it existed.”
Sabine’s face became pale.
Elara moved behind her father.
Marcus removed the envelope.
His name had been written across the front.
The handwriting belonged to his mother.
He broke the seal.
Marcus,
If this has reached you, then Agnes kept her promise and Elara found the garden.
I am sorry that truth required such a long road.
The house was never the inheritance. The land, the accounts, and the family name were only its shadow.
Elara’s mother carried the final legal claim to the Aster Foundation. Elara carries it now.
Trust the child.
Trust Agnes.
Do not trust anyone who tries to silence either of them.
Beneath the signature was a sequence of numbers and the name of a bank in Geneva.
Marcus felt the room tilt.
“The Aster Foundation was dissolved,” he said.
Sabine folded her arms.