Tessa wanted to ask what religion Lenora had meant, but the nurse entered before the question formed. Maisie had finished receiving stitches and would remain under observation for several more hours, though she was expected to recover fully if no new symptoms appeared. Tessa followed the nurse into the room and immediately went to the bed, smoothing the blanket over Maisie’s legs and kissing the uninjured side of her forehead. The child’s face looked impossibly small against the hospital pillow, and the sight forced everything else into a temporary distance.
For most of the evening, Maisie drifted between sleep and wakefulness. Tessa stayed beside her while Evan handled phone calls with the deputy, their attorney, and the security company at the house. He arranged for the gate codes to be changed, ordered the staff not to admit Lenora under any circumstances, and asked that the west wing remain locked until police finished collecting anything they might need. Tessa listened without commenting, relieved that he was acting decisively now, though she remained aware that practical steps could not repair the damage created by years of silence.
Near nine o’clock, Evan left briefly to find coffee and something Tessa might be willing to eat. The room had grown quiet by then, and the corridor outside had settled into the subdued rhythm of evening rounds, with rubber-soled footsteps passing at intervals and muted voices carrying from the nurses’ station. Tessa sat beside Maisie with one hand resting on the blanket, watching the child’s breathing while the monitor displayed a steady pulse.
She began thinking about the wooden box.
The image returned with unusual clarity because she had noticed it just before the paramedics entered the house: the silver coin, the faded red thread, the old photograph partly hidden beneath a yellowed cloth. She had seen only a portion of the child’s face in that photograph, but she now wondered whether the girl had been Abigail. More troubling was the possibility that Lenora had not attacked Maisie because of something the child did, but because opening the box had exposed something Lenora had spent decades keeping out of sight.
Tessa picked up her phone and searched Abigail Hawthorne’s name.
The results were almost empty. There were contemporary Hawthornes connected to local businesses, charity boards, property records, and several decades of public donations, but Abigail appeared nowhere obvious. No obituary surfaced in the first pages, no memorial notice, no archived newspaper article that matched the dates Evan had given her. For a family whose name appeared on hospital wings, scholarship funds, and county buildings, the absence of a dead child seemed unusually complete.
She was still searching when Maisie moved.
Tessa locked the phone and leaned toward the bed. Maisie’s eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, and she shifted beneath the blanket with the sleepy discomfort of a child trying to remember where she was. Tessa offered her water, helped her take a small sip, and explained gently that they were at the hospital because she had hurt her head.
Maisie stared at her for a few seconds, then looked toward the empty chair where Evan had been sitting.
“Daddy?”
“He’ll be back soon. He went to get Mommy some coffee.”
The child accepted that answer and closed her eyes again. Tessa thought she was falling back asleep until Maisie’s fingers tightened slightly around hers. Her voice was quiet and hoarse from crying, and the question came with the casual uncertainty of a child asking about someone she expected her mother to know.
“Mommy, who is Abby?”
Tessa did not answer immediately. She studied her daughter’s face, wondering whether Maisie could have overheard something in the emergency department, although she had been asleep or undergoing treatment during every conversation in which Abigail’s name had been spoken. Evan had never called his sister Abby in front of her, and Tessa herself had used only the full name.