Chapter 6 - Christmas Cookies and a Missing Key
Detective Cole wanted the children removed from Hawthorne House immediately.
Mason refused.
“No.”
Jonathan stared at him. “This is not negotiable.”
“That’s what Vanessa used to say.”
The words silenced him.
Mason’s voice shook.
“Mom is here.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I heard her.”
“So did I.”
“Then why are we leaving?”
“Because I am your father, and for once I am going to make the dangerous choice harder for someone else instead of for you.”
Mason looked away.
Sophie tugged his sleeve.
“I want Mommy.”
Jonathan knelt between them.
“So do I.”
They moved to Mara’s sister’s farmhouse five miles away while police searched the mansion.
For one evening, Christmas became almost ordinary.
Mara baked sugar cookies.
Sophie used too much frosting.
Mason stole a broken cookie and denied it while chewing.
Jonathan sat at the kitchen table watching them.
He had missed ordinary.
He had missed so much.
Sophie held up a cookie shaped like a crooked star.
“This is Daddy.”
“Why am I crooked?”
“Because you work too much.”
Mason laughed.
Jonathan did too.
Then he stopped.
Children often told the truth as jokes because adults made truth difficult.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Mason looked at him.
Jonathan continued.
“I kept thinking providing for you was the same as being there.”
Mason said nothing.
“I was wrong.”
“Are you going to travel again?”
“Sometimes.”
Sophie frowned.
“No.”
Jonathan smiled sadly.
“But never the way I did before.”
Mason finally spoke.
“You can’t fix everything with one apology.”
“I know.”
“That’s good.”
The farmhouse phone rang.
Mara answered.
Nobody spoke on the other end.
Then a music box played.
Mara went white.
Jonathan stood.
“What is it?”
She whispered, “Your mother’s Christmas song.”
The caller disconnected.
Detective Cole traced the call to a pay phone near Hawthorne House.
Police found nobody.
But someone had left a brass key taped beneath the receiver.
On its tag:
NORTH FOUNDATION.
At midnight, Cole returned to the farmhouse.
“We found where it fits.”
Beneath a stone bench in the mansion’s wine cellar was a locked iron hatch.
The key opened it.
Below was a staircase descending thirty feet.
Jonathan wanted to go.
Cole refused.
“You are a witness and a potential target.”
“My wife may be down there.”
“And your children need one parent aboveground.”
That ended the argument.
Police entered.
For forty-seven minutes, Jonathan waited.
Mason sat beside him.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“If Mom comes back, is she going to hate you?”
Jonathan swallowed.
“Maybe.”
“Do you deserve it?”
He almost smiled.
“Maybe.”
Mason nodded.
“That seems fair.”
At 1:06 a.m., Cole called.
They had found the archive.
Hundreds of boxes.
Tapes.
Ledgers.
Photographs.
But no Emily.
Then Cole said something else.
“We found a bedroom.”
Jonathan stood.
“Recently used?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“There are photographs of Mason and Sophie covering one wall.”
His blood went cold.
“Whose room?”
“We don’t know.”
The police searched it.
Inside a desk was a stack of letters written by Charles Reed.
The newest was dated four days earlier.
Jonathan read the first line.
Vanessa failed. Emily is still resisting. The boy remembers too much.
He looked at Mason.
“What do I remember?”
Jonathan did not answer.
Mason grabbed the letter.
Near the bottom, another sentence appeared.
Mason saw me the night Emily disappeared.
His face emptied.
“No.”
Jonathan touched his shoulder.
“Mason?”
The boy stepped backward.
A memory was returning.
Christmas lights.
His mother crying.
A gray-haired man at the kitchen door.
And blood on a white handkerchief.
Mason whispered, “Grandpa took Mom.”
Then he remembered one more thing.
“He wasn’t alone.”
“Who was with him?”
Mason looked toward Mara.
Everyone followed his gaze.
May you like
Mara’s face collapsed.
“I can explain,” she whispered.
