PART 2 My new wife’s seven-year-old daughter burst into tears every time we were left alone together. 002

Part 2

I had seen finger bruises before.

In the trauma unit, they arrived disguised as accidents: a fall down stairs, a rough game on the playground, a clumsy collision with a kitchen counter. But skin remembered what mouths were too afraid to say. A handprint left a geometry. Pressure left a pattern. Fear left everything else.

Harper’s arm was small in my hand.

Too small for marks like that.

She looked up at me with wide, dry eyes, as if tears would only make the world angrier.

“Harper,” I said, keeping my voice steady with an effort that felt almost surgical, “who did this?”

Her lips parted.

Then her gaze slid past my shoulder.

Toward the staircase.

Toward the empty house above us.

Her face changed.

Not guilt.

Not confusion.

Recognition.

“She hears,” Harper whispered.

I released her sleeve and lowered it carefully, as though the fabric itself might hurt her. My heart was hammering, but my hands stayed calm. Years in trauma had taught me that panic was contagious. If I broke, she would vanish inside herself again.

“Who hears?” I asked.

Harper shook her head.

From upstairs, the house gave a soft settling groan.

Old wood. Old pipes. Old secrets.

I turned my head slowly toward the ceiling.

Clara was in the kitchen, humming.

The same melody she always hummed when she made coffee.

Light. Pretty. Tuneless.

Harper stepped back from me.

“I have to go to school,” she said.

“Harper—”

“I have to go.”

Her voice was flat now. Locked. Whatever door had opened a crack was sealed again.

I drove her to school in silence.

At the drop-off lane, she unbuckled her seat belt but didn’t move immediately. Her backpack sat on her knees, both hands clenched around the straps.

“Ethan?”

It was the first time she had said my name without being prompted.

“Yes?”

“If I tell you something someday,” she asked, still staring forward, “will you believe me even if it sounds impossible?”

The question lodged itself somewhere beneath my ribs.

“Yes,” I said. “I will.”

She nodded once, opened the door, and disappeared into the stream of children.

I watched until she reached the entrance.

Only then did I let myself breathe.

When I got home, Clara was waiting in the living room.

She stood by the front window in a pale blue blouse, sunlight cutting a bright line through her hair. She looked like a woman painted by someone who believed in angels.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

I set the car keys on the entry table. “Harper has bruises on her arm.”

For a moment, nothing moved.

Then Clara sighed.

Not sharply.

Not defensively.

Tiredly.

“Oh, Ethan.”

That was the first thing she said.

As if I had disappointed her.

“She’s seven,” I said.

“She’s also dramatic.” Clara walked toward me, her expression softening into practiced concern. “She bruises easily. She always has. I told you she can be difficult.”

“They’re finger marks.”

Clara stopped three feet from me.

The warmth left her face so gradually that anyone else might not have noticed. But I did. I noticed the small tightening near her mouth. The slight narrowing of her eyes. The millimeter shift from wife to witness.

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“I’m asking what happened.”

“She probably grabbed herself.” Clara folded her arms. “She does that when she’s upset.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“You’ve known her for a month.”

“And I know bruises.”

She smiled then.

It was a small, sad smile.

The kind people use before they forgive you for something you haven’t done.

“You work in an ER, Ethan. You see monsters everywhere.”

The room seemed to shrink around us.

“I see injuries,” I said. “And I know when a child is afraid.”

Clara tilted her head. “Afraid of whom?”

I didn’t answer quickly enough.

Her eyes glistened.

Just like that, she became wounded.

Fragile.

Beautifully misunderstood.

“My daughter has spent months trying to sabotage my happiness,” she said softly. “She cried when I dated. She screamed when you proposed. She told her teacher once that I locked her in a closet.”

My stomach tightened.

“Did you?”

Clara stared at me.

Then she laughed.

One clean, incredulous sound.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

Her smile vanished.

“Careful,” she said.

The word was quiet.

It carried no threat.

That made it worse.

“Careful with what?” I asked.

“With believing every little story she tells you.” Clara stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Harper knows how to make people love her by making them pity her. Her father fell for it too.”

I froze.

“You told me her father died.”

“He did.”

“You never said how.”

Clara’s eyes flickered.

It was almost nothing.

Almost.

“A car accident,” she said.

The answer came too quickly.

I remembered then how she had mentioned him during our engagement. Vague fragments. He was troubled. He was unstable. He drank. He left scars she never elaborated on. A dead man who could not defend himself made a convenient villain.

“What was his name?” I asked.

Clara’s expression hardened. “Why?”

“Because I just realized you’ve never told me.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then the humming started again under her breath.

That same little tune.

“Daniel,” she said finally. “His name was Daniel Vale.”

At the hospital that afternoon, every child with a skinned knee made me think of Harper.

I moved through the trauma unit on muscle memory. Chest pain in Bay 4. A compound fracture from a cycling accident. An elderly man whose blood pressure refused to stabilize. Monitors beeped. Phones rang. Residents shouted updates across curtains.

And beneath it all, a seven-year-old girl whispered: Mommy says if I tell, the fire will come.

On my break, I sat in the staff room and searched Daniel Vale.

I expected an obituary.

Maybe a local article.

What I found was a death notice from six years earlier.

Daniel James Vale, thirty-four, survived by his wife Clara Monroe-Vale and daughter Harper.

Cause of death not listed.

There were no articles about a car accident.

No crash report in the public database.

Nothing.

I searched harder.

Daniel Vale plus fire.

The screen loaded.

One result caught my eye.

A small archived piece from the Denver Herald:

LOCAL MAN DIES IN RESIDENTIAL FIRE; WIFE AND CHILD ESCAPE

My blood went cold.

I opened it.

The article was short. Daniel Vale had died in a house fire on Maple Finch Road at 2:13 a.m. His wife, Clara, and three-year-old daughter, Harper, escaped with minor injuries. Investigators believed the fire started in the downstairs study. No foul play suspected.

At the bottom was a photo.

The burned shell of a house.

And standing near an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, Clara.

Younger. Pale. Perfect.

In her arms, a tiny girl with dark hair clutched a stuffed fox.

Scout.

My phone buzzed.

A text from Clara.

Dinner at seven. Don’t be late. Harper has been emotional today. We need stability.

I stared at the message until the words blurred.

Then another text came through.

And Ethan?

A pause.

Then:

Stop digging.

For several seconds, I didn’t move.

The staff room refrigerator hummed beside me.

Someone laughed faintly down the hallway.

I looked at my phone again, reading the two words.

Stop digging.

I had searched from a hospital computer. Not my phone. Not my laptop. I hadn’t spoken to anyone. I hadn’t told Clara what I was looking for.

And yet she knew.

At seven sharp, I walked into 219 Hawthorne Avenue.

Dinner was already on the table.

Roasted chicken. Green beans. Mashed potatoes.

The kind of meal that said nothing terrible could happen in a house where butter melted so neatly.

Harper sat with her hands in her lap. Clara poured wine.

“You’re late,” she said.

“It’s seven.”

“You walked in at seven-oh-two.”

Harper flinched.

I saw it.

Clara saw me see it.

She smiled.

“Long day?”

“Yes.”

“Anything interesting happen?”

“A few things.”

Clara raised her glass. “Trauma medicine. Always something.”

I sat down across from Harper.

Her eyes flicked to mine once.

Just once.

There was a message there, but I couldn’t read it.

Halfway through dinner, Clara turned to Harper.

“Show Ethan your drawing.”

Harper went rigid.

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t be rude.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “She doesn’t have to.”

Clara’s fork paused in midair.

“Ethan, darling, I wasn’t speaking to you.”

The sweetness in her voice made the room colder.

Harper slid off her chair and went to her backpack by the hall. Her movements were slow, as if each step had been decided for her long ago. She pulled out a folded sheet of paper and brought it to the table.

Clara took it first.

She looked at it and laughed softly.

Then she handed it to me.

It was a child’s drawing.

A house.

A woman with yellow hair.

A man with brown hair.

A little girl.

Above them, red and orange flames filled the sky.

At the bottom, in uneven pencil letters, Harper had written:

THE FIRE COMES WHEN DADDY SEES.

I looked up.

Clara was watching me, wineglass near her mouth.

“What a vivid imagination,” she said.

Harper whispered, “I didn’t draw that.”

Clara turned to her.

The shift was instantaneous.

Not visible to anyone who didn’t know what fear looked like.

But Harper’s face drained.

“What did you say?” Clara asked.

Harper swallowed. “Nothing.”

“No, sweetheart. You spoke. We use our words in this family.”

The child’s hands began to tremble.

I placed the drawing on the table. “That’s enough.”

Clara’s eyes moved to me.

For a moment, she looked almost amused.

“Excuse me?”

“I said that’s enough.”

Silence fell.

Then Clara smiled.

Slowly.

Beautifully.

“You have no idea what family you married into.”

That night, I did not sleep.

I lay beside Clara in the dark, listening to her breathing.

It was steady.

Too steady.

At 2:13 a.m., my eyes opened.

Not because of a sound.

Because of a smell.

Smoke.

I sat up fast.

The bedroom was dark, but the air carried that unmistakable bite. Chemical. Dry. Alive.

“Clara.”

She didn’t move.

I shook her shoulder. “Clara, wake up.”

Her body rolled toward me loosely, face serene.

Too serene.

Drugged?

No.

Pretending.

I threw the covers aside and ran into the hall.

Smoke curled along the ceiling.

Not thick yet, but spreading.

“Harper!”

Her bedroom door was closed.

I rushed toward it and grabbed the knob.

Locked.

From the outside.

A small brass slide bolt had been installed high on the frame where a child could never reach it.

My vision flashed white with rage.

I yanked the bolt back and shoved the door open.

Harper was already awake, standing in the center of the room with Scout clutched in one arm and her backpack in the other.

She wasn’t crying.

She had been expecting this.

“Come on,” I said.

She didn’t move.

“Harper, now.”

Her eyes fixed behind me.

I turned.

Clara stood at the end of the hallway in her white nightgown.

No panic.

No confusion.

No fear.

Only disappointment.

“You opened the door,” she said.

Smoke slid between us like a living thing.

“What did you do?” I asked.

Clara looked past me to Harper. “You showed him.”

Harper pressed Scout to her chest.

“I had to.”

“No.” Clara’s voice sharpened. “You wanted to. There’s a difference.”

Something cracked downstairs.

The smoke thickened.

I scooped Harper into my arms.

Clara stepped into my path.

“Move,” I said.

Her eyes shone in the dark.

“You think you’re saving her?”

“I know I am.”

Clara leaned close enough that I smelled perfume beneath the smoke.

“Daniel thought that too.”

Then the smoke alarm finally screamed.

The house erupted into noise.

I didn’t wait.

I drove my shoulder into the hallway wall to angle past Clara, shielding Harper’s head against my chest. Clara staggered back, not falling, just watching as I carried the child down the stairs.

The lower hall glowed orange.

The fire was in the study.

The door stood open.

Inside, flames crawled up the curtains with deliberate hunger. Books curled black on the shelves. A trail of something glossy led from the rug to the threshold.

Accelerant.

Not an accident.

Never an accident.

I got Harper outside through the back door and set her on the lawn. Cold air hit my lungs like glass. The night sky above Hawthorne Avenue was clean and indifferent.

“Stay here,” I said.

She grabbed my shirt. “No.”

“Harper—”

“She’ll come.”

I looked back.

Clara stood framed in the kitchen doorway.

Behind her, smoke billowed into the ceiling.

She had followed us downstairs.

But she did not come outside.

Instead, she raised one hand.

And waved.

Then she stepped backward into the smoke.

Firefighters arrived seven minutes later.

By then, neighbors had gathered in robes and coats. Red light washed over the street. Harper sat in the ambulance wrapped in a blanket, her small body pressed against my side.

A firefighter approached.

“Sir, anyone else inside?”

“My wife,” I said. “Clara Monroe.”

He spoke into his radio and ran toward the house.

Harper stared at the flames.

“She won’t be there,” she whispered.

I looked down. “What?”

“She never stays for the fire.”

Before I could ask what she meant, a police cruiser pulled up.

An officer took my statement while paramedics checked Harper for smoke inhalation. I told them about the locked door. The accelerant. The bruises. The threats. The text message.

The officer’s expression changed with each detail.

“Do you have the message?”

I showed him my phone.

He read it.

Stop digging.

His jaw tightened.

“We’ll need to speak with your wife.”

“So will I.”

He glanced at the house. “First we need to find her.”

They didn’t.

By dawn, the fire was out.

The study was destroyed. The hallway was damaged. Smoke had blackened the second floor. But no body was found.

No Clara.

No white nightgown.

No trace of her except a silk robe folded neatly on the bed and her wedding ring placed on the bathroom sink.

Harper and I spent the morning at the hospital.

Not because we were badly injured, but because protocols existed for children pulled from burning houses and men who had inhaled smoke. A social worker arrived. Then a detective named Marisol Reyes.

She had sharp eyes, gray at her temples, and the tired patience of someone who trusted evidence more than people.

She interviewed me first.

Then Harper.

I was not allowed in the room for all of it, but through the glass I watched Harper sit with Scout in her lap while Detective Reyes spoke gently.

For a long time, Harper said nothing.

Then Reyes showed her the drawing.

Harper’s face folded.

She began to talk.

When Reyes came back out, she looked older.

“Mr. Cole,” she said, “we need to discuss Daniel Vale.”

“I found the article.”

“Then you know there was a fire.”

“I know the article said accidental.”

Reyes gave me a long look. “The original investigator had concerns. Nothing enough to file charges. But concerns.”

“What kind?”

“Daniel Vale had told a coworker two days before his death that he planned to take Harper and leave Clara.”

The corridor seemed to tilt.

“He knew?”

“He suspected abuse. Emotional at minimum. Possibly physical. He’d started documenting things.”

“Where are the documents?”

“Destroyed in the fire.”

Of course they were.

Reyes folded her arms.

“Harper told me something else. She said her mother kept a box.”

“What box?”

“A black metal lockbox. She said it has pictures, papers, and a voice inside it.”

“A voice?”

“That was her wording.”

I remembered Harper with her backpack.

Daddy… look at this.

“What did she show you?” Reyes asked.

I blinked. “What?”

“Harper said she tried to show you something before. Something from her backpack.”

I shook my head slowly. “Not yet.”

Reyes watched me.

“Then she meant to.”

A nurse appeared to discharge us. The social worker explained the emergency protective process. Since Clara was missing and under investigation, Harper could remain with me temporarily pending review.

Temporarily.

The word landed like a blade.

Harper heard it too.

Her hand found mine.

I held on.

We did not return to Hawthorne Avenue. The house was taped off, guarded, unlivable.

Instead, we went to a hotel near the hospital.

Room 614.

Two queen beds. Beige walls. A humming heater. A painting of mountains that looked like it had been designed to be forgotten.

Harper placed Scout on one bed and sat beside him.

For the first time since the fire, she looked like a child who had run out of instructions.

I ordered soup from room service. She ate three bites. I drank coffee that tasted like burned paper.

Outside, Denver moved on.

Inside, Harper stared at her backpack.

“Ethan?” she said.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t call you Daddy because I forgot.”

I sat across from her.

“I know.”

“I called you that because she hates it.”

“Clara?”

Harper nodded.

“She said I only get one daddy. She said I wasted him.”

The words hit harder than any scream could have.

I kept my voice even. “You didn’t waste anyone.”

Harper looked at the carpet.

“My real daddy made recordings.”

I leaned forward.

“What kind of recordings?”

“He said if the fire came, I had to keep the fox.”

She reached for Scout.

For seven years, that stuffed fox had been dragged through fear, sleep, school, silence, and fire. Its orange fur was worn thin in places. One glass eye had been replaced with a brown button. Around its neck was a faded blue ribbon.

Harper turned it over.

With careful fingers, she opened a seam along the back.

Not torn.

Opened.

Hidden beneath the stuffing was a small plastic pouch.

Inside was a flash drive.

And a tiny brass key.

My mouth went dry.

“Harper,” I whispered, “how long have you had this?”

“Daddy gave it to Scout before he went to sleep.”

“Before the fire?”

She nodded.

“He told me not to tell Mommy. He said one day someone kind would come, and I would know.”

Her eyes lifted to mine.

“I didn’t know at first.”

I took the flash drive like it might detonate.

The hotel television had a USB port. I plugged it in.

A folder appeared.

Three files.

One video.

Two audio recordings.

The video was labeled:

FOR HARPER — WHEN SAFE

I looked at her. “Are you sure?”

She nodded.

I pressed play.

A man appeared on the screen.

Daniel Vale.

He sat in what looked like a home office, face pale, eyes bloodshot, hair disheveled. He had the exhausted look of someone who had slept beside danger for too long.

But when he spoke, his voice was gentle.

“Harper, my little fox,” he said, and beside me Harper made a sound so small it was almost not there.

Daniel swallowed.

“If you’re watching this, it means I failed to get us out the easy way. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The video trembled slightly, as if his hand had bumped the desk.

“Your mother is not sick in a way I know how to fix. She hurts people and makes them believe they hurt themselves. She keeps trophies. She records things. She plans endings.”

My skin prickled.

Daniel looked off camera toward a door.

Then back.

“I’ve put copies where I can. But if she finds them, she’ll burn everything. Fire cleans the story. That’s what she says.”

Harper’s hand slipped into mine.

Daniel leaned closer.

“Listen carefully. The lockbox key is with this drive. The box is not in the house. It’s where Clara keeps things she thinks no one will connect to her.”

The video flickered.

His voice lowered.

“Harper, remember the blue angels.”

The screen went black.

For several seconds, neither of us moved.

Then Harper whispered, “The cemetery.”

I turned to her.

“What?”

“The blue angels. Mommy took me there after Daddy died. There are two blue angels by a bench. She said Daddy was under the ground but not that ground.”

I grabbed my phone and called Detective Reyes.

No answer.

I left a message, then another.

Then I called the main line and was told she was in the field.

I looked at the flash drive.

At the key.

At Harper.

Every rational part of me knew I should wait.

Every protective part knew Clara might not.

“Harper,” I said, “do you remember the cemetery’s name?”

She nodded.

“Rosehill.”

Rosehill Memorial sat on the eastern edge of the city beneath a sky the color of steel.

I checked us out of the hotel under the excuse of needing pharmacy supplies, then drove with one eye on the mirrors. Maybe that was paranoia. Maybe it was pattern recognition.

Harper sat in the back with Scout and said nothing until we passed through the cemetery gates.

“There,” she said.

The blue angels were not large.

Two weathered statues flanked a stone bench beneath a bare-branched elm. Their wings were painted a faded turquoise, chipped by years of snow and sun.

Behind the bench stood a wall of cremation niches.

Harper pointed.

“She stood there.”

I parked and told her to stay in the car with the doors locked.

This time, she obeyed.

The wall was arranged in bronze plates engraved with names.

I scanned them.

Nothing for Vale.

Nothing for Monroe.

Then I saw it.

A small plaque near the bottom.

Eleanor Finch. Beloved Mother. 1948–2010.

Clara’s mother.

Finch.

The burned house had been on Maple Finch Road.

My pulse climbed.

There was a narrow maintenance seam beneath the plaque. I knelt, using the brass key on the small lock hidden under the lip.

It turned.

Behind the bronze plate was not an urn.

It was a black metal lockbox.

I carried it back to the car with both hands.

Harper stared at it as though it had teeth.

“Is Mommy inside?” she asked.

“No.”

But I wasn’t sure what kind of answer that was.

We drove straight to the police station.

Detective Reyes met us in the lobby fifteen minutes later. The moment she saw the lockbox, her expression hardened.

“Where did you get that?”

“Rosehill Memorial. Daniel’s video led us there.”

“You opened it?”

“No.”

“Good.”

The box was taken to evidence.

A warrant was obtained with impressive speed once Reyes saw Daniel’s video. Harper and I waited in a family interview room while the adults behind glass moved faster and spoke lower.

Two hours passed.

Then Reyes returned.

She closed the door behind her.

In her hand was a printed photograph.

She placed it on the table.

It showed the contents of the box laid out in evidence markers.

Photographs.

Documents.

Several flash drives.

A small digital recorder.

A stack of IDs.

And newspaper clippings.

Not just Daniel’s fire.

Others.

A man named Peter Lang, killed in an apartment blaze in Boulder.

A fiancé, Andrew Cole, dead from carbon monoxide in Fort Collins.

A woman named Meredith Shaw, presumed suicide after a cabin fire near Aspen.

All connected to Clara.

Different last names.

Different hair colors.

Different cities.

Same smile.

Same perfection.

I sat there, unable to speak.

Reyes tapped one photograph.

It showed Clara standing beside a man I didn’t know. She was younger, with dark hair instead of blonde.

“This predates Daniel,” Reyes said. “We’re looking at at least four suspicious deaths across twelve years.”

Harper had gone very still.

“Did Mommy kill Daddy?” she asked.

Reyes looked at me first.

I wished she hadn’t.

Then she crouched beside Harper.

“We believe your father was trying to protect you,” she said carefully. “And we believe your mother hurt him.”

Harper nodded as if she had already known.

Maybe she had.

Maybe children always know the shape of the monster, even before they learn its name.

That evening, Reyes drove us back to the hotel herself.

“I’ll post a unit outside,” she said. “Clara’s face is being circulated. Airports, bus stations, car rentals. She won’t get far.”

I looked out at the darkening street.

“She planned this.”

“Yes.”

“No,” I said. “I mean she planned being discovered.”

Reyes studied me.

“She knew I was digging. She texted me. She staged the fire at the same time Daniel died. She wanted me to find the pattern.”

“Why?”

I looked back toward the hotel entrance, where Harper stood with a female officer, clutching Scout.

“Because now everyone is looking at Clara Monroe.”

Reyes understood.

“And you think she’s already someone else.”

I didn’t answer.

I didn’t have to.

That night, Harper finally slept.

I sat by the window with the lights off, watching the police cruiser parked below.

At 11:46 p.m., my phone rang.

Unknown number.

I let it ring twice.

Then answered.

For a second, there was only breathing.

Then Clara said, “You found Eleanor.”

My grip tightened.

I stood and moved into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind me.

“The police have the box,” I said.

“I assumed they would.”

“You wanted them to.”

A soft laugh.

“There’s my clever husband.”

“You’re finished, Clara.”

“Ethan.” She sighed, almost fondly. “You still think finished means caught.”

Behind the bathroom door, the hotel room was silent.

“Where are you?”

“Closer than you’d like.”

I looked toward the mirror.

My own face stared back, pale and hollow-eyed.

“What do you want?”

“I want to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For giving Harper a new story.”

My blood chilled.

“She needed one. Poor tragic little girl. Dead father. Evil mother. Hero stepfather.” Clara’s voice turned almost tender. “People will adore her now.”

“She’s safe from you.”

“No one is safe from what they are.”

I went still.

“What does that mean?”

Clara hummed.

That same tune.

Light. Pretty. Tuneless.

Then she said, “Did she show you the second folder?”

The line went dead.

I stood there for several seconds, phone pressed to my ear.

Second folder.

I rushed back into the room.

Harper slept curled around Scout. The flash drive lay on the desk beside my wallet. I plugged it into my laptop this time, hands moving too fast.

Three files appeared.

Same as before.

Then I noticed the corner of the window.

A hidden directory.

Password protected.

My pulse thundered.

The prompt asked for a password.

I tried Harper.

Incorrect.

Daniel.

Incorrect.

Scout.

Incorrect.

Then I remembered Daniel’s words.

My little fox.

I typed:

littlefox

The folder opened.

Inside was one video file.

The label read:

FOR ETHAN

I stared at it.

That was impossible.

Daniel had died six years ago.

I clicked play.

The screen stayed black for three seconds.

Then a man appeared.

Not Daniel.

Me.

I was sitting in our living room at Hawthorne Avenue.

Filmed from above.

From inside the wall clock.

The timestamp was from three weeks earlier.

The day I moved in.

Onscreen, Harper stood in the doorway clutching Scout.

“Are you staying?” she asked recorded-me. “Or are you leaving soon?”

“I’m staying,” recorded-me said. “I’m your stepdad now.”

The image froze.

Then Clara’s voice came through the speakers.

Not from the room.

Recorded over the video.

Calm. Close. Smiling.

“Hello, Ethan.”

I backed away from the laptop.

Onscreen, the frozen image of Harper stared at me from the doorway.

Clara continued.

“If you are watching this, then Harper chose you. That makes you useful. It also makes you temporary.”

The video cut to another angle.

Harper’s bedroom.

The locked door.

The brass slide bolt.

Clara’s voice softened.

“She is very convincing when she cries, isn’t she?”

My stomach turned.

The image changed again.

A close-up of Harper asleep.

Scout beside her.

Then Clara whispered:

“Ask yourself one thing before Part Three begins.”

The screen went black.

White letters appeared.

Who taught Harper where the matches were?

…
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