Chapter 6 - WHAT WAS HIDDEN IN SOPHIE
I read Emily's sentence ten times.
They are looking for the child.
My first thought was Sophie.
My second was that it made no sense.
Sophie was six.
She wasn't part of a company.
She couldn't know about millions of dollars.
Then I remembered what Emily had told me when Sophie was three.
“She remembers things,” Emily had said.
I thought she was describing a child's imagination.
I was wrong.
Sophie had witnessed something the night before Emily died.
Something no one had thought to ask her about because she was three.
I sat with her on the sofa.
“Sweetheart, do you remember the night Mommy died?”
She frowned.
“A little.”
“What do you remember?”
“A man.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“What man?”
“He was angry.”
“What did he look like?”
She closed her eyes.
“Black coat.”
“Anything else?”
“He had a silver ring.”
Daniel suddenly stood.
He was staring at the photograph from Emily's files.
“That ring,” he whispered.
The retired police supervisor wore the same ring.
But Sophie remembered another detail.
“He smelled like oranges.”
Harris looked at me.
“That's enough.”
It wasn't.
Because the supervisor died the year before.
Someone else had been wearing the ring.
We began rechecking every person connected to Claire.
The search led us to a private investigator named Marcus Vale.
Marcus had worked for Claire during Emily's final year.
He disappeared three days after the wedding.
Then we found his car.
Abandoned at the airport.
Inside was a notebook.
Most pages were burned.
One survived.
SOPHIE — MEMORY TEST.
I couldn't speak.
Someone had been observing my daughter.
Not after Emily died.
Before.
Claire had been studying Sophie.
Why?
The answer came from an old pediatric report.
Emily had taken Sophie to a specialist because Sophie sometimes repeated phrases she heard once and remembered exact locations with unusual accuracy.
The specialist had written a note.
Strong autobiographical memory. Child may retain sensory details from events adults assume she cannot remember.
Sophie wasn't a witness by accident.
She was the only witness who couldn't be bribed.
That night, a car stopped outside our house.
I moved Sophie upstairs.
Harris ordered officers to the street.
The car drove away.
But before it disappeared, the passenger window lowered.
A man looked directly at me.
Silver ring.
Orange-scented cologne.
I knew him.
May you like
It was Claire's attorney.
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