Chapter 7 - THE CHILD WHO KNEW THE GREEN LIGHT
Tommy called again from another prepaid phone.
Victoria kept him talking while Grant attempted a trace.
“Is your mother with you?” she asked.
“She can hear me.”
“Put her on.”
“She says you have to remember first.”
Victoria forced patience into her voice. “Remember what?”
Tommy recited the childhood traffic song Sister Catherine had mentioned. Red meant wait. Yellow meant hide. Green meant cross to someone safe.
Victoria remembered teaching the song to Emily near the estate gates. Their father’s cars passed too quickly, so Rebecca made the girls promise never to cross until the green signal appeared.
“My mom says she waited,” Tommy said. “You never crossed.”
Guilt struck before reason. Victoria had been seven, injured, and told her sister was dead. Yet the child’s words reached the part of her that still felt responsible.
“Where are you?”
“She says not until the tables are white.”
The foundation luncheon used white outdoor tables. It was nineteen days away.
Grant traced the signal to a public library, but mother and son vanished before police arrived. A librarian remembered Tommy returning shoes borrowed from the children’s desk. She also remembered a woman watching from outside without entering.
“Could you describe her?”
“White, early thirties, maybe. A scarf covered her jaw. She stood under the traffic light even after it changed.”
The librarian had found an envelope Tommy left inside a fairy-tale book. It contained a photograph of the Hale guesthouse taken before the fire.
May you like
In an upstairs window stood Emily.
Beside her was another child—the unidentified dead girl.
