Chapter 6: The Hall Camera

Back in the hotel, I plugged the drive into my laptop and it asked for nothing.

There was one file on it.

The name was a date, five years old.

The date was the night before I was thrown out.

Torsten took the armchair on the far side of the room.

He sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped.

"You can sit here," I said, and patted the sofa.

"You made a rule."

"The rule is about the house. It doesn't cover the sofa."

"That's a very convenient reading."

"I own the sofa," I said.

"I'm Ms. Wren."

He crossed the room and sat down beside me, a careful foot away.

I pressed play.

The picture was gray and a little grainy.

It was the second-floor hallway of the main house, shot from above the stairs.

I knew every inch of it.

My bedroom door was the third on the left.

The timestamp in the corner said 4:09 a.m.

"I was asleep," I said.

"I slept like the dead that year."

"Keep watching."

A door opened at the far end of the hall.

A woman came out in a white nightgown and bare feet.

She carried a flat green leather box against her chest.

I knew the box.

It held my grandmother's emerald necklace, and my mother kept it in her dressing room.

The woman turned her face toward the camera for half a second.

It was Lydia.

My stomach turned over.

I had known.

Somewhere underneath, I had always known it was her.

I had not let myself look.

Lydia walked down the hall without a sound.

She stopped at my door.

She listened.

She opened it and went in.

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