Chapter 2 - The Bracelet
At the hospital, Ethan barely left Claire's side.
She had two cracked ribs, a badly bruised shoulder, six stitches near her hairline, and enough river water in her lungs to keep the doctors watching her overnight.
But what hurt most was the silence between them.
Ethan sat beside the bed turning the silver bracelet over in his hands.
"Tell me," Claire said.
He looked up.
"It was mine."
"I figured that part out."
"My mother gave it to me when I was eleven. I lost it years ago."
"Where?"
He didn't answer.
Claire's stomach tightened.
"Ethan."
He rubbed his thumb across the initials.
"At Blackwood."
"The old caretaker house?"
He nodded.
Claire had seen Blackwood Cottage from the main estate road. It sat beyond the north woods, boarded up and supposedly empty since Ethan's grandfather died.
"Why were you there?"
Ethan leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
"When I was twenty-four, I was with someone named Mara Ellis."
Claire waited.
"We were serious. My father hated it. Mara's family worked for ours. He thought she was after money."
"Was she?"
"No."
The answer came too fast to be rehearsed.
"What happened?"
Ethan swallowed.
"She left."
Claire watched him.
"That's not the whole story."
"I got a letter saying she didn't want me contacting her again. A week later she was gone."
"And you lost the bracelet at Blackwood Cottage?"
"The last night I saw her."
Claire's skin prickled.
"How long ago?"
"Eight years."
The little girl by the river looked seven or eight.
Claire whispered, "Ethan..."
He stood abruptly.
"Don't."
"You thought of it too."
"That doesn't mean anything."
"Vanessa said you could never know the truth about the child. A little girl knew my name. She had your bracelet."
Ethan paced once, then stopped at the window.
"Vanessa was around back then. She knew Mara. She knew everything going on in the family."
Claire remembered Vanessa's spotless coat beside the river.
"She lied about seeing me. She said I went back to the lodge."
Ethan turned.
"How do you know that?"
"You told the medic that's what she said."
He went quiet.
Then Claire remembered one more thing.
"The girl said, 'She said he can never see me.'"
Ethan's face drained.
A knock came at the door.
A uniformed deputy stepped inside.
"Mr. Bennett? Mrs. Bennett? I'm Deputy Shaw. We searched the north bank after your report. We didn't find a child."
Claire's heart sank.
"She was there."
"I believe you saw someone," Shaw said carefully. "But we found something else."
He held up an evidence bag.
Inside was a tiny blue hair ribbon caked with mud.
And pinned to it was a folded scrap of paper.
Shaw placed it on the tray table.
Three words had been written in a child's handwriting.
May you like
DON'T TRUST VANESSA.
