Chapter 6 - What Happened in Room 417
My mother remembered the music box at 3:11 the next morning.
She woke so suddenly she nearly fell from bed.
I woke too.
“What?”
“Mia.”
“What?”
“Your dollhouse.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
She was already out of bed.
“The old dollhouse.”
I followed her into the sitting room, where Damian was asleep in a chair.
He woke the instant the door opened.
“What happened?”
Mommy looked at him.
“I know where the music box is.”
Within five minutes, half the house was awake.
The dollhouse Mommy meant had been mine.
My grandfather built it before he died.
When we moved apartments two years earlier, one side had cracked.
Mommy put it in storage.
Inside its tiny upstairs bedroom was a wooden toy chest.
I remembered keeping little things inside.
Stickers.
Bracelets.
A plastic ring.
And apparently, a broken music box.
“The storage unit was searched,” Damian said.
“Yes, but the dollhouse wasn’t there.”
“Where is it?”
“My sister’s garage.”
Damian stared.
“You have a sister?”
“In Vermont.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“You might have mentioned that before we searched half the city.”
“You never asked whether I had relatives in Vermont.”
“That is technically true and deeply irritating.”
Despite everything, Mommy laughed.
By sunrise, Damian had arranged for someone near my aunt’s town to check.
The dollhouse was still there.
So was the music box.
Nobody touched it until Damian, Mommy, Lily and I arrived later that day.
Mommy insisted on going herself.
Damian insisted we travel with security.
The compromise involved enough vehicles to make my aunt believe a president had arrived.
Aunt Rachel opened her garage.
“There.”
The dollhouse sat beneath an old blanket.
I ran toward it.
Mommy stopped me.
“Let Damian check first.”
He gave her a look.
“I’m not a bomb technician.”
“No, but apparently you have one.”
He did.
That was another thing I learned about Damian Cross.
He had a person for everything.
The music box was eventually removed and placed on a worktable.
It was exactly as Mommy remembered.
Dark wood.
Faded blue flowers.
A small metal crank on the side.
Lily touched the lid.
“I remember this.”
Damian looked at her.
“Who gave it to you?”
She concentrated.
“I don’t know.”
“Think, bug.”
“A lady.”
Mommy and Damian exchanged a glance.
“What lady?” Mommy asked.
“Hospital lady.”
“A nurse?”
Lily shook her head.
“Maybe.”
“What did she look like?”
“I don’t know.”
Lily had been very sick.
Memory from that period came in pieces.
“She said it was from Daddy,” Lily added.
Damian’s expression darkened.
“It wasn’t.”
Lily looked worried.
“You’re not mad?”
“Never at you.”
He kissed the top of her head.
Mommy watched them.
Then she examined the box.
“I tried to fix it in the break room.”
“Why take it home?”
“The screws were stripped. I had tools at home.”
“You didn’t notice anything unusual?”
“No.”
Damian turned it over.
The bottom felt thicker than it should.
His technician removed four tiny screws.
The panel lifted.
Nothing.
Mommy frowned.
Then the technician tapped the interior.
Hollow.
A second false panel came away.
Inside was a memory card.
And a key.
A real key.
Small.
Brass.
A number stamped into it.
417-B
Mommy stared.
“What does B mean?”
Damian looked at the memory card.
“We’re about to find out.”
The card contained one video.
Thirty-two seconds.
Recorded inside Room 417.
The camera angle was low, as though someone had placed a phone on a shelf.
The timestamp was during Lily’s hospitalization.
Mommy appeared first.
She adjusted Lily’s IV.
Lily was asleep.
Mommy left.
Seven minutes later, Dr. Warren Hale entered.
He looked around.
Then Caleb Voss followed him.
They closed the door.
There was no sound for several seconds.
Then Hale spoke.
“The shipment leaves tonight.”
Voss said, “Cross’s people are watching Northstar.”
“He’s at the shareholder meeting.”
“Not anymore. His daughter crashed.”
Hale looked toward Lily.
“Then the timing worked.”
Damian stopped the video.
The room became silent.
Mommy stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
He did not answer.
She understood anyway.
“No.”
“Anna—”
“No.”
Her voice rose.
“They did something to Lily.”
“We don’t know that.”
“They said the timing worked.”
“We need context.”
Mommy turned toward Lily.
Lily was playing with me across the garage and had not heard.
Mommy lowered her voice.
“You told me you believed no one hurt her.”
“I said I wanted to believe it.”
“What happened that night?”
Damian looked at the frozen video.
“My company was voting on whether to expose Northstar’s financial irregularities to federal investigators.”
“And?”
“I had enough votes to force an external audit.”
“Then Lily collapsed.”
“Yes.”
“You left the meeting.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the vote?”
“Postponed.”
“For how long?”
“Two weeks.”
“And during those two weeks?”
Damian looked at her.
“Northstar destroyed records.”
Mommy closed her eyes.
“My God.”
He resumed the video.
Voss stepped closer to Hale.
“What about the nurse?”
“Which nurse?”
“The brunette. Bennett.”
Hale dismissed it.
“She doesn’t know anything.”
“She challenged the medication record.”
“She thinks it’s a system error.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
Hale’s expression became cold.
“Then we deal with it.”
The video ended.
Mommy stood frozen.
Damian replayed the last sentence.
Then again.
Mommy stopped him.
“Don’t.”
He closed the laptop.
The evidence had changed everything.
Until that moment, we knew somebody was stealing medication and altering records.
Now we knew Lily’s medical emergency might have been deliberately used to stop Damian.
Whether they had caused it remained uncertain.
But Hale and Voss had been inside her room.
Talking about it.
And discussing Mommy.
“What about the key?” Mommy asked.
The brass key labeled 417-B.
Damian photographed it.
Marco began checking.
Eventually they found the answer.
St. Catherine’s room numbers had once included separate bedside storage lockers.
Most had been removed during renovation.
Room 417 used to have locker A and locker B.
Locker B had been relocated to the hospital archives.
Still locked.
Still inventoried under an old facilities record.
Mommy stared at Damian.
“Evelyn hid the key in the box.”
“Maybe.”
“And the memory card.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To keep the evidence separate from the drive.”
“Why put it in Lily’s room?”
Damian looked at the video timestamp.
“I don’t think Evelyn did.”
Mommy frowned.
“Then who recorded this?”
They checked the metadata.
The device belonged to a phone registered to a name neither recognized.
But the hospital employee directory did.
Samantha Reed.
Pharmacy technician.
Terminated seven months earlier.
Three days after Lily left intensive care.
Reason:
Inventory misconduct.
Mommy shook her head.
“I remember Samantha.”
“What was she like?”
“Quiet. Smart. She had a little boy.”
“Why was she fired?”
“They said she was stealing medication.”
Damian’s expression sharpened.
“Was she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could she have discovered the scheme?”
Mommy thought.
“Yes.”
They searched public records.
Samantha Reed had disappeared after losing her job.
No new employment.
No recent registered address.
Her phone disconnected.
Her social media abandoned.
It looked as if she had vanished.
Then Marco found something.
A traffic camera photograph six months earlier.
Samantha getting into a bus.
Destination:
Philadelphia.
From there, nothing.
Damian stared at the image.
“She may be alive.”
Mommy looked at him.
“And she may know exactly what happened to Lily.”
That afternoon, Damian’s team began searching for Samantha.
The rest of us returned home.
Not our home.
Damian’s.
By then, it had begun to feel less strange.
That scared Mommy in a different way.
She and Damian were spending more time together.
Sometimes arguing.
Sometimes not.
I saw him make coffee for her before she asked.
I saw her remind him to eat.
I saw Lily sit between them at dinner like she had planned the seating arrangement.
Three days passed.
Then Marco entered Damian’s office holding a printed email.
“We found Samantha.”
Mommy stood.
“Where?”
“She contacted us first.”
Damian took the paper.
“How?”
“She saw news coverage of the break-in at Anna’s house.”
“What does she want?”
Marco hesitated.
“She’ll talk.”
Mommy exhaled.
“Good.”
“There’s a condition.”
Damian read the message.
His face tightened.
“What?”
Marco looked at Mommy.
“Samantha says she will only speak to Anna.”
“Fine.”
“In person.”
“Fine.”
“She says Damian cannot be there.”
Damian’s expression went cold.
Mommy folded her arms.
“Still fine.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“Damian.”
“No.”
“It’s my decision.”
“It could be a trap.”
“So could staying here.”
He stared at her.
She stared back.
Marco looked as if he wished he were anywhere else.
Finally Damian asked, “Where?”
Marco answered.
“A church in Philadelphia.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. Noon.”
Mommy reached for the message.
At the bottom Samantha had added one final line.
Anna, if you want to know why Lily Cross almost died, come alone.
Mommy read it twice.
Then she looked at Damian.
“I’m going.”
May you like
And for the first time since we met him, Damian Cross looked genuinely afraid of what my mother might discover.
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