Chapter 6 - The Summer I Forgot
I thought my mother had finally become the thing Grant always claimed my family was.
Unstable.
Desperate.
Inventing stories to fill holes they could not explain.
"You erased my memory?"
The words sounded absurd even as I said them.
Mom shook her head quickly.
"Not erased."
"You just said a doctor made sure I wouldn't remember."
"I was eight."
"That doesn't answer me."
"You saw something."
"What?"
She pressed both hands against her temples.
"I don't know all of it."
I laughed without humor.
"Of course you don't."
Dad looked at her with alarm.
"You never told me this."
"Because I didn't remember until now."
"Elena, what doctor?"
She looked at him.
"Samuel Rusk."
Dad went pale.
"No."
I looked between them.
"Who is Samuel Rusk?"
Reyes answered after checking her phone.
"Dr. Samuel Rusk was a psychiatrist affiliated with St. Matthew's Hospital in Greenwich."
She scrolled.
"He lost his license twelve years ago after allegations involving unauthorized drug trials and falsified patient records."
A cold pressure built behind my eyes.
"And you took your eight-year-old daughter to him?"
Mom's voice was barely audible.
"I thought I was protecting you."
I turned away.
The wall in front of me contained a live camera aimed at my bed.
The room behind me contained a file describing how to have me committed.
Now the mother I had mourned was telling me that my childhood memory had been medically manipulated.
For one irrational second, I wanted Grant to walk in and tell me everyone else was crazy.
At least that reality was familiar.
Reyes interrupted the silence.
"We need facts."
She looked at Mom.
"Why was Claire at Sterling Hall when she was eight?"
Mom took a long breath.
"I worked for Victor before the official forensic audit."
"You said he hired you fourteen years ago."
"That was when he hired my firm."
"Not you personally?"
"I had known him much longer."
Dad looked at her.
"How much longer?"
She met his eyes.
"Since college."
The answer stunned him.
"You knew Victor Sterling in college?"
"We were in the same economics program for two years."
"You never told me."
"Because I was ashamed."
"Of knowing him?"
"Of trusting him."
Mom walked to the doorway and stared down the east corridor.
"Victor started a small investment company before graduation."
"He convinced students and professors to put money into it."
"I helped with the books."
"Then I found transactions that made no sense."
"When I confronted him, he said he was moving funds temporarily."
"I believed him."
"By the time I understood it was fraud, he had already used my credentials on several filings."
Dad looked wounded.
"Elena."
"I was twenty-two."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because when I met you, I wanted that version of myself to be dead."
The word dead hung between them.
Mom continued.
"Years later, Victor contacted me again."
"He said he wanted to correct old mistakes."
"He offered legitimate consulting work."
"I refused."
"Then, when Claire was eight, my firm accepted a corporate retreat contract without realizing Sterling Capital was the client."
She looked at me.
"I brought you because childcare had fallen through."
A sensation moved through me.
Not a memory.
Something beneath memory.
The smell of chlorine.
A red staircase runner.
A woman humming behind a closed door.
I gripped the desk.
"There was a pool."
Mom froze.
"Yes."
"Inside?"
"An indoor pool in the south wing."
I closed my eyes.
Blue tiles appeared briefly in darkness.
Then vanished.
"I remember a red ball."
Mom covered her mouth.
"You carried it everywhere."
I opened my eyes.
"What did I see?"
She shook her head.
"I found you in Victor's office after midnight."
"You were hiding beneath his desk."
"Your pajamas were wet."
"You wouldn't speak."
"The only thing you kept saying was, 'The lady went down.'"
Dad whispered a curse.
Reyes stepped closer.
"Did someone drown?"
Mom looked toward the floor.
"Victor's first wife disappeared that summer."
I had heard about her.
Margaret Sterling.
Grant's grandmother.
The family story said she abandoned Victor and their two children after a breakdown.
Diane once called her selfish.
Sophia refused to discuss her.
"She disappeared while I was here?"
"Three days after."
"And I saw something near the pool."
"I think so."
My hands became cold.
"Why didn't you call the police?"
Mom looked at me with shame.
"I did."
"What happened?"
"A detective came to the house."
"Victor told him you had wandered into an adult party and become frightened."
"Dr. Rusk told him you had night terrors and an overactive imagination."
"Then Victor showed me copies of the old college filings with my name on them."
"He said if I kept making accusations, I would go to prison and you would lose both parents."
Dad stared at her.
"You should have told me."
She looked at him.
"I was afraid you would do exactly what you just did with the birthday cake."
Despite everything, Dad almost smiled.
It vanished quickly.
"So Rusk drugged her?"
"He said he could treat the trauma before it became permanent."
Mom's voice cracked.
"He used medication and hypnosis."
"I thought it was therapy."
"Within weeks, Claire stopped waking up screaming."
"She stopped talking about the pool."
"And I decided forgetting was mercy."
I stared at her.
"You don't get to decide that."
"I know."
"Stop saying you know."
My voice rose.
"You all made decisions about my mind, my safety, my marriage, my memories, and then called it protection."
Mom started to cry.
Not dramatically.
She simply stood in front of me while tears filled her eyes.
"You're right."
The sentence stopped me.
She did not defend herself.
"I was afraid."
"I made terrible choices because I was afraid."
"Some of those choices kept you alive."
"Some of them gave Grant exactly the weapon he needed to control you."
"I cannot change that."
"I can only stop lying now."
For the first time since she entered the mansion, I believed her completely.
It did not repair anything.
But it gave us solid ground.
Reyes pointed toward the brass slot beneath the monitor.
"If Claire was here at eight, what does this have to do with the ledger?"
Mom walked closer.
"After the pool incident, I became suspicious of Victor again."
"I copied some of his paper records before we left."
"Years later, when he hired my firm, I realized the fraud had grown from those same accounts."
"The old ledger connected both periods."
"I believed the safest place to hide it was somewhere Victor had already searched and dismissed."
"Claire's things."
I looked at her.
"You hid a financial ledger in my childhood belongings?"
"Not exactly."
"Then where?"
"I divided it."
Reyes frowned.
"How do you divide a ledger?"
"You don't."
Mom looked at the silver key.
"You divide what makes it useful."
She explained that the leather ledger contained names and transaction dates, but the most damaging entries were written using abbreviations and numeric codes.
The silver key opened a hidden compartment in the spine.
Inside the compartment had been a thin strip of microfilm.
The film contained the decoding index.
Without the index, the ledger looked suspicious but inconclusive.
Without the ledger, the film was meaningless.
"Where is the film?"
Mom looked at me.
"I put it inside your bracelet."
I remembered the silver house charm.
It had always seemed unusually heavy.
"Which charm?"
"The house."
My stomach dropped.
Grant had taken the entire bracelet.
"Then he has it."
"Maybe."
"He stole the bracelet."
"Yes, but if he found the film, he would have found the ledger by now."
Reyes looked thoughtful.
"Unless he only recognized the key charm."
Mom nodded.
"The house charm opened differently."
"How?"
"Pressure on the chimney."
I could see it in my mind.
A tiny silver chimney.
I used to press it with my thumbnail when I was bored.
One day it had loosened.
I had thought the charm was broken.
Then another memory surfaced.
Grant in the restaurant eleven years ago.
My bracelet catching on the edge of the table.
A charm falling onto the carpet.
Grant kneeling to pick it up.
He handed the bracelet back.
Later that night, the whole thing disappeared.
"He removed the house first."
Everyone looked at me.
"At the restaurant."
"The bracelet snagged."
"One charm fell."
"Grant picked it up."
"I thought he put it back."
I closed my eyes.
"But I never checked."
Mom whispered.
"Then the film may still exist."
"Where?"
I thought about my old apartment.
My jewelry box.
The cardboard boxes Dad stored after I moved in with Grant.
Then I remembered something else.
The house charm had not fallen at the restaurant.
I had seen it weeks later.
I was almost certain.
"My law school graduation."
Dad frowned.
"What about it?"
"You gave me a framed photograph."
"Yes."
"The frame had things from Mom mounted around it."
"Her fountain pen."
"A ticket stub."
"A charm."
Dad's eyes widened.
"The little house."
My pulse accelerated.
"Where is that frame?"
He looked toward the smoke-filled corridor.
"Your old bedroom at my house."
Reyes was already reaching for her radio.
"Nobody goes there alone."
Dad nodded.
"Agreed."
A trooper hurried toward us from the staircase.
His face told me something had happened before he spoke.
"Agent Reyes."
"What?"
"The team reached Sophia Sterling's hotel."
Mom stepped forward.
"Is she there?"
"Her room is empty."
"Her luggage is still inside."
"The bathroom mirror is broken."
"And they found blood on the sink."
My mother went white.
"How much?"
"Not enough to confirm a serious injury."
The trooper hesitated.
"But there's something else."
He handed Reyes a photograph transmitted from the hotel.
Someone had written a message across the mirror in red lipstick.
I WILL NOT BE BURIED TWICE.
Beneath it were three initials.
May you like
E.M.C.
My mother's initials.
