The movement was small, but I saw it.
He knew the name.
“Who was he?” I asked.
“That does not concern you.”
“He controlled my life for almost a year.”
“And Juliana helped you escape. Is that why you came here? Gratitude?”
“Partly.”
“What is the rest?”
I looked at the facedown photograph again.
“Three weeks before Juliana died, she contacted me.”
Lorenzo’s head turned sharply.
“She called you?”
“She wrote.”
“That is impossible.”
“I still have the letter.”
His control broke at last.
“Where?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“Bring it to me.”
“I will.”
“Now.”
“After we agree on what happens next.”
He stared at me as though no one had ever attached conditions to his commands.
Vincent stepped forward. “Miss Foster, perhaps you do not understand—”
“I understand perfectly.”
My voice trembled, but I did not stop.
“Juliana asked me to come if anything happened to her. She said there were things inside this house she could not trust anyone else to find.”
Silence followed.
Lorenzo’s face had gone pale beneath his anger.
“What things?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Convenient.”
“She was frightened.”
“My wife was not easily frightened.”
“No. That was why I believed her.”
He turned toward Vincent. “Leave us.”
This time, Vincent resisted.
“Sir, I think—”
“Leave.”
The older man’s gaze moved from Lorenzo to me. There was warning in it, but also something harder to interpret.
Concern, perhaps.
Or recognition.
When he was gone, Lorenzo walked to the side table and turned the photograph upright.
Juliana stood beneath flowering trees, laughing at someone beyond the frame. She wore a pale summer dress, one hand lifted to protect her eyes from the sun. Sophia, no older than three, sat on her hip.
There was no Lorenzo in the picture.
“She wrote to you three weeks before her death,” he said. “What exactly did she say?”
“That she had made a mistake. That she had waited too long to correct it.”
“What mistake?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to accept that she sent you into my home without telling you why?”
“She did not tell me to use false papers. That was my decision.”
“Why not contact me directly?”
“Because she told me not to.”
Pain moved across his face, quick and sharp.
“Did she say I was responsible for her death?”
“No.”
“Did she say she was afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Then what did she say?”
I remembered the letter so clearly that I could see the pressure of Juliana’s handwriting, the places where the ink had pooled because she paused too long.
“Do not trust appearances,” I said. “Do not assume grief makes people honest. And if Sophia is ever in danger, find the blue room before they do.”
Lorenzo stared at me.
“The blue room?”
“Yes.”
“There is no blue room in this house.”
“Then perhaps there used to be.”