Chapter 5 - The Letters That Never Arrived.
By sunset, the mansion no longer felt like my workplace.
It felt like the center of a storm that had been waiting years for one loose window to open.
Stellan's security team confirmed the Lake Geneva property still existed.
The holding company owned it through two layers of paperwork designed to make casual searches annoying rather than impossible.
Gideon's name was attached to both.
That did not prove Adrian had ever been taken there.
It did prove Gideon had lied when he claimed he did not know what happened after the clinic.
Stellan wanted to leave immediately.
Helena wanted lawyers.
I wanted answers.
Fern wanted dinner.
Her needs won.
That fact somehow changed the temperature of the room.
While people with expensive watches argued about trusts and property records, I sat on a sofa and fed mashed sweet potato to the person whose existence had broken the entire story open.
Stellan watched from across the room.
"What?"
He looked almost embarrassed to be caught.
"Nothing."
Fern slapped the spoon.
Orange puree landed on my sleeve.
Stellan stared.
I waited.
Then, unbelievably, the corner of his mouth moved.
"Did you just smile?"
"No."
"You did."
"You should focus on feeding her."
"You should focus on lying better."
Helena looked between us as if she had stepped into an alternate version of her own home.
Then Fern sneezed.
Stellan's attention snapped back to her.
"Is that normal?"
I laughed before I could stop myself.
He looked offended.
"Babies sneeze."
"Her lungs are fragile."
"They are, but she is allowed to sneeze."
His jaw tightened.
"I was asking a reasonable question."
For the first time since I had entered his office that afternoon, I felt something close to normal.
It lasted less than a minute.
Mrs. Thornbury entered carrying a small stack of envelopes tied with faded blue ribbon.
"Sir, you asked me to check the old storage cabinets in Mr. Adrian's room."
Stellan stood.
"You found something."
"I found these behind the bottom drawer."
She placed the bundle on the table.
The envelopes were unopened.
Every one was addressed to Adrian Cross.
The return address on the first one made my skin go cold.
My old apartment.
I reached for it with shaking hands.
"That's mine."
Stellan looked at me.
"You wrote him?"
"Every week for two months."
After Adrian disappeared, I had sent letters to the only family office address I could find connected to Cross Holdings.
I had not known whether the Stellan Cross in newspapers was related to my Evan.
I only knew Evan had once mentioned a family company with the word Cross in it.
I had written because desperation makes coincidence feel like a map.
Every letter had come back marked unable to deliver.
Or so I thought.
I stared at the envelopes now.
They were mine.
Same cheap stationery.
Same crooked handwriting.
Same stamps.
But none had postal return markings.
Someone had received them.
Someone had hidden them.
"How did these get into Adrian's room?"
Stellan asked the question slowly.
Mrs. Thornbury shook her head.
"I don't know."
Helena picked up one envelope.
"Who had access?"
"Household staff, family, Mr. Vale, Mr. Royce's assistants."
Stellan held out his hand.
"May I?"
He was asking me.
That mattered.
I nodded.
He opened the first envelope carefully.
The paper inside was dated six days after Adrian vanished.
My own words stared back at me.
Evan, I don't know where you are, but I need you to know I'm not angry yet.
I remember writing that line.
I had been lying.
I was furious.
But beneath the anger was terror.
Stellan stopped reading and handed the letter back.
"You don't have to read it."
"I think I do."
My next sentence asked him to call me.
The next said the doctor had confirmed the pregnancy.
The next said I had heard the heartbeat.
My throat closed.
Fern reached for the paper.
I pulled it gently away.
"Not this one, baby."
Stellan opened the second envelope.
Then the third.
Each one carried more fear.
More anger.
More details about a child Adrian never got to meet.
The seventh letter was different.
It was not from me.
The handwriting was Adrian's.
Stellan recognized it before I did.
He stopped breathing.
"Where was that found?"
Mrs. Thornbury pointed to the bundle.
"With the others."
The envelope was addressed to Stellan.
No stamp.
No return address.
Stellan opened it.
The paper inside had been folded twice.
His eyes moved across the first line.
Then stopped.
"Read it," Helena whispered.
He did not.
"Stellan."
He handed the letter to her.
I did not want to intrude.
Then Helena began crying silently.
That frightened me enough to ask.
"What does it say?"
Stellan looked toward me.
His voice was rough.
"It says he was coming home."
I stared at him.
"When?"
"March seventeenth."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
The day Adrian left me.
The day his car disappeared.
Stellan took the letter back and read aloud.
"I was wrong about you."
He paused.
"I confused surviving Dad with choosing him."
Another pause.
"Mara is pregnant."
My hand flew to my mouth.
The room blurred.
"I don't know how to be someone's father, but I know I don't want our child learning that love has to be earned."
Stellan's voice cracked on the final word.
He stopped.
Fern looked at him from my lap.
Her eyes were solemn.
Then she reached toward him.
Stellan crossed the room and took her.
He held her close while Helena finished reading the letter.
"I'm coming to the house tonight."
"I need your help."
"Dad knows about Mara."
Helena looked up.
The sentence changed everything again.
Stellan's face hardened.
"Keep reading."
"He says Dad had someone following them."
I felt suddenly cold.
"He knew?"
Helena nodded.
"He says he found out two days ago."
Stellan took the letter.
His eyes scanned downward.
Then he went very still.
"What?" I asked.
He did not answer.
"Stellan."
His eyes lifted to mine.
"Adrian says he copied something from our father's files."
"What something?"
"He doesn't say."
"Why would that matter?"
Stellan kept reading.
"Because he writes, if Dad stops me before I get there, the key is where Grandma used to hide Sunday candy."
Helena stared at him.
"The library."
Stellan turned.
"What?"
"Your grandmother kept candy in the false-bottom drawer of the old library desk."
No one moved for a moment.
Then Stellan handed Fern to me and walked out of the room.
We followed.
The mansion library smelled of leather, wood polish, and a fire that had burned down to embers.
Helena went directly to an antique writing desk beneath the west window.
She pulled open the center drawer.
It was empty.
"How do you open the false bottom?"
She pressed two fingers beneath the back edge.
A thin panel lifted.
Inside was a small brass key.
Nothing else.
Stellan picked it up.
A paper tag was tied to it with black thread.
On the tag, in Adrian's handwriting, was one word.
Union.
I looked at Stellan.
"Union Station?"
"Probably."
Helena frowned.
"A locker?"
Stellan turned the key in his fingers.
"Not anymore."
"Then what?"
He looked toward me.
"Safe-deposit lockers used to operate in the station's old baggage services."
"Used to?"
"Most were removed years ago."
My hope collapsed almost as quickly as it had appeared.
Then Mrs. Thornbury cleared her throat behind us.
"Mr. Adrian had a private membership at the Union League Club."
Stellan looked at her.
"He hated that place."
"Which is perhaps why no one would think to look there."
Stellan stared at the key again.
A small number was engraved along the stem.
314.
Helena whispered it aloud.
"Three-fourteen."
My pulse jumped.
"March fourteenth?"
The date was three days before Adrian vanished.
Stellan's expression changed.
"Or locker three hundred fourteen."
He reached for his coat.
"Where are you going?"
"Downtown."
"Now?"
"Yes."
I stood.
"I'm coming."
"No."
My anger returned instantly.
"You don't get to lock me out of this."
"Fern has been awake too long, and you have been dragged through a decade of family lies in one afternoon."
"That's not a reason."
"It's three reasons."
"Stellan."
He stopped at the sound of his first name.
I held Fern closer.
"Adrian left that clue the day after I told him about her."
"If there is something in that box about my daughter, I am not waiting at home for you to decide what I deserve to know."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then at Fern.
"Fine."
Helena stood.
"I'm coming too."
Stellan's eyes closed briefly.
"Of course you are."
Twenty minutes later, we were in the back of a black SUV heading toward downtown Chicago.
Fern slept in a car seat Stellan's staff had somehow produced in under ten minutes.
Snow began falling against the windows.
The city lights blurred beyond the glass.
Stellan sat across from me holding the brass key.
"Mara."
"What?"
"If we find something that changes what you believe about Adrian, I need you to remember one thing."
I waited.
His voice lowered.
"Whatever he hid from you, he wrote that letter because he was trying to come back."
I looked at Fern sleeping between us.
"That doesn't make the missing year disappear."
"No."
His gaze moved to the snow outside.
"But it may tell us who stole it from all of us."
The SUV turned onto Jackson Boulevard.
Stellan's phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen.
A message from estate security had arrived.
He read it twice.
"What?" I asked.
His eyes lifted.
"Someone entered the Lake Geneva property twenty minutes ago."
"Who?"
"We don't know."
Another message appeared.
Stellan's expression darkened.
"They set off the interior motion sensors."
"Can security get there?"
"They're on the way."
He stared at the brass key in his hand.
May you like
Then at me.
"Whoever is inside that house knows we're looking now."
