Mercer.
That was why the surname had felt familiar.
Victoria had known a Daniel Mercer in college.
Or rather, Anna had.
A quiet architecture student with dark hair and a battered motorcycle.
Their father had hated him.
Victoria’s heart began beating harder.
“How old was your mother?”
Lucy hesitated.
“She was thirty-nine when she died.”
The garden disappeared.
Victoria’s face lost color.
Anna would have been forty.
Exactly.
“When?” Victoria whispered.
“Last February.”
Victoria shut her eyes.
Not twenty-eight years ago.
Not dead as a teenager.
Not buried somewhere unknown.
February.
Just months ago.
Anna had been alive.
Alive all these years.
Edward’s expression changed.
“Victoria, who is this child?”
Lucy looked between them.
“My mom said Victoria Hale was her sister.”
Someone behind them gasped.
Edward went completely still.
Victoria stared at Lucy as though the child had reached inside her chest and stopped her heart.
“Your mother told you that?”
Lucy nodded.
“She told me if anything happened to her, I had to come here.”
Victoria’s eyes burned.
“Why didn’t she come herself?”
Lucy looked down.
“She said she couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Edward stepped closer.
“That’s enough.”
Victoria turned toward him.
His face had hardened.
“This is obviously some kind of mistake.”
Lucy’s small shoulders tightened.
Edward continued.
“Anna died when she was twelve.”
Victoria looked at him sharply.
The sentence was so familiar that she almost accepted it automatically.
It was the story they had all lived with.
Anna vanished the summer of 1998.
Their father said there had been an accident near the river.
Search teams found Anna’s jacket caught on branches downstream.
Police found blood on the rocks.
No body was ever recovered.
For months, Victoria refused to believe she was gone.
For years, she secretly expected Anna to walk back through the doors of Hale House.
Eventually, expectation became grief.
Grief became silence.
And silence became history.
But now Lucy stood in front of her.
The locket existed.
Daniel Mercer’s name existed in her memory.
And the child had Anna’s eyes.
Victoria crouched until she was level with Lucy.
For the first time that evening, she stopped caring about her dress.
“Lucy,” she said gently, “where have you been living?”
“With Mrs. Alvarez.”
“Who is Mrs. Alvarez?”
“My neighbor.”
“Your father?”
Lucy shook her head.
“I never met him.”
Victoria glanced toward Edward.
Something was wrong.
Not only with Lucy’s arrival.
With the entire story.
“Did your mother give you anything else?”
Lucy nodded slowly.
“She gave me a letter.”
Victoria’s heart jumped.
“Do you have it?”
Lucy looked frightened suddenly.
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“A man took my backpack.”
Edward frowned.
“What man?”
“At the bus station.”
Victoria straightened.
“You came here by bus?”
Lucy nodded.
“From where?”
“North Carolina.”
“You traveled here alone?”
Again, a nod.
A murmur moved through the guests.
Victoria’s stomach turned.
“You’re nine years old.”
“My mom told me where to go.”
“You could have been hurt.”
“I know.”
Her voice cracked.
“But I promised.”
Victoria looked down at the child.
Whatever else was happening, Lucy had crossed state lines carrying half a silver locket because her dying mother told her to find a woman she had never met.
Victoria reached for her carefully.
This time, instead of pulling Lucy’s hand away, she wrapped both hands around it.
“You’re safe now.”
Lucy’s eyes filled instantly.