“For thirty-one years?”
“For thirty-one years.”
My father had lost most of his life protecting papers.
No.
Not papers.
Proof.
The proof that powerful people could not simply rewrite what happened.
“Did Carl know you might be alive?” Daniel asked.
Lucas shook his head.
But I remembered Carl’s final recording.
The true inheritance lies beneath this house.
He had known about the archive.
Perhaps he had suspected something more.
We searched the hidden rooms.
Behind Lucas’s bed was a wall covered in pencil marks. At first, I thought they were random lines. Then I realized they were dates—one for every day of his confinement.
Among them were drawings of three faces.
Evelyn.
Carl.
And a child who never grew older.
Me.
In a desk drawer, we found hundreds of letters addressed to Claire.
My first birthday.
My first day of school.
My sixteenth birthday.
My graduation.
My imagined wedding.
