Chapter 8: The Study

Hattie's ledger held thirty years of Satterthwaite births and every rite night she had ever attended.

It also held the rite-night page, the only written record of who had stood behind which veil, and Pia would want that page gone.

I left Emil asleep with Hattie and Bram on the couch and drove up the ridge at dawn.

The Alpha house was quiet.

A housekeeper let me in without a word and pointed down the east hall.

Rhys was in his study with the lamp still on, in last night's shirt with the sleeves shoved up.

Two empty coffee cups sat on the desk.

"Where is she?" I said.

He looked up, and for a moment he only looked at me.

"At her sister's," Rhys said. "She didn't come home."

"Hattie's house was broken into. The only thing taken was her ledger."

"I know. Bram called me an hour ago."

"Then you know it was her."

"I know she was at a dinner with twenty people while it happened." His voice was tired. "I can't prove anything yet."

"You didn't come for me."

I hadn't planned to say it.

It came out of me flat and hard, and it filled the room.

"What?"

"Six years. You never once came to find me."

"I looked for three years, Willa."

"And then you stopped."

"Because someone told me you were happy somewhere with a bank account."

"And you believed it."

His jaw worked.

"You never told me you were pregnant," he said, very low. "You never once asked me anything. You stood in that gallery, and you ran."

"I watched you claim her."

"And you didn't ask me why."

"What was there to ask?"

"Everything," Rhys said.

He stood up, and the chair scraped back.

"I have a son who's five years old," he said, "and I learned about him from a jumbotron."

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