Chapter 4 - The Voice of Their Mother
The cassette was twenty-one years old.
Reed had to send Pierce across Boston to find a machine that could play it.
By noon, they were inside an underground conference room beneath one of Reed's warehouses, surrounded by concrete, armed guards, and three separate security systems.
Maisie sat beside the old tape player.
Reed stood across from her.
Neither had eaten.
Neither mentioned it.
Pierce inserted the tape.
"Ready?"
No one was.
Reed nodded anyway.
The machine clicked.
Static filled the room.
Then a woman's voice came through the speaker.
Soft.
Elegant.
Terrified.
"If you are hearing this, then Silas has done something I was afraid he would do."
Reed's face went white.
Maisie's fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
The woman continued.
"Reed, my darling boy, if you are alive, listen carefully. Do not trust the first story you are given. Do not trust the bodies. Do not trust the fire report. And whatever happens, find your sister."
Reed closed his eyes.
Maisie stopped breathing.
The tape crackled.
"Silas believes your father's empire should belong to him. Your father refuses to see it. I have discovered accounts, payments, and letters tying Silas to men who have been attacking our family businesses. I am moving copies of everything into the preservation trust. Maeve is the secondary beneficiary because no one watches a six-year-old child."
Pierce whispered, "That explains M.A.-2."
The recording continued.
"If I am wrong, forgive me. If I am right, the sparrow will lead you home."
Then, faintly in the background, a child's voice called, "Mama?"
Maisie's face collapsed.
She knew that voice.
Not consciously.
Not as a memory she could explain.
But her body knew it.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
On the tape, their mother answered, "I'm here, little sparrow."
Then she began to sing.
Sleep, little sparrow, harbor lights are low.
Close your eyes, my darling. Home is where you know.
When the dark comes calling, follow what is true.
If the sky forgets your name, I will remember you.
Maisie started crying before the song ended.
Reed did not.
He stood absolutely still, his face carved from grief.
The tape clicked again.
Their mother's voice returned, lower now.
"The final records are not in the house. They are where Reed broke the blue boat and blamed the storm. He will remember."
The tape ended.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Pierce looked at Reed.
"Blue boat?"
Reed's eyes opened.
"The boathouse in Marblehead."
"You broke a boat?"
"I was fourteen."
"And blamed a storm?"
Reed gave him a look.
"I was fourteen."
Maisie wiped her face with both hands.
"She knew Silas was dangerous before the fire."
"Yes."
"And your father ignored her."
Reed's jaw tightened.
"He usually ignored anything that threatened his pride."
"Maybe that's why she used a child's trust instead of his."
Reed looked at the dead tape player.
"Maybe."
Pierce closed his laptop.
"We should go to Marblehead."
Reed nodded.
"Quietly."
Walsh, who had been standing near the door, said, "I'll arrange the route."
Reed looked at him.
Walsh met his eyes.
Something passed between them.
Suspicion.
Tiny, but real.
Reed said, "Pierce arranges it."
Walsh's expression did not change.
"Understood."
Before they left, Maisie spent twenty minutes alone with the cassette.
Reed found her sitting in the dark conference room with the tape player on the table.
"You played it again."
"Four times."
"Why?"
"I was hoping memory would behave like a locked door if I knocked long enough."
Reed leaned against the wall.
"Did it?"
"No."
She pressed rewind.
The tape clicked softly.
"I hate that I know her voice without knowing her."
Reed looked at the machine.
"Memory is not a moral test."
Maisie glanced at him.
"That sounds like something a therapist said."
"I have never spoken to a therapist."
"That was obvious the first time I saw you sitting in a bathtub with bloody hands."
He almost objected, then stopped.
"Fair."
Maisie smiled faintly.
"Do you remember the whole lullaby?"
"Yes."
"Sing it."
Reed stared at her.
"No."
"Why not?"
"I do not sing."
"You said I did, badly. Maybe it runs in the family."
"No."
She folded her arms.
"Coward."
His eyebrows lifted.
"You have known me again for less than two days and already think that word is safe?"
"Am I wrong?"
Reed looked at the tape player.
Then, so quietly Maisie almost missed it, he began.
"Sleep, little sparrow, harbor lights are low..."
His voice was not polished. It was deep, uncertain, and a little rough.
Maisie's eyes filled on the second line.
By the third, something flashed through her mind.
A piano.
Bare feet on polished wood.
Reed at seventeen pressing one key at a time while pretending he did not know she was hiding under the instrument.
Maisie gasped.
Reed stopped.
"What?"
"You played piano."
He went still.
"A little."
"I hid under it."
His face changed.
"You used to crawl under the bench when Father was angry."
"And you played so I could not hear him shouting."
Reed looked away.
Maisie stood.
"That is mine. That memory is mine."
"Yes."
She laughed through tears.
"I remembered something that wasn't fire."
Reed's throat tightened.
For the first time since she had entered his ruined VIP room, Maisie saw pure relief on his face.
Not because the memory proved who she was.
DNA had already done that.
Because the first thing returning to her was not Silas, smoke, or pain.
It was Reed trying to protect a little girl from the sound of their father.
Maisie stepped forward and hugged him.
He hesitated only a second before hugging her back.
"Maybe there is more," she whispered.
"There is."
"You sound certain."
"I am."
"Why?"
Reed rested his chin briefly against the top of her head.
"Because we had more than one bad night."
Two hours later, Reed, Maisie, Pierce, and six men left Boston in three vehicles.
Walsh remained behind to manage the city crews.
Maisie sat beside Reed in the back of the middle SUV.
For twenty minutes neither spoke.
Then she said, "You knew I was scared of thunder."
Reed looked at her.
"Maeve was."
"I still am."
"I know."
"Do you remember what I used to do?"
Reed's mouth shifted.
"You climbed into my bed and kicked me until I woke up."
Maisie stared.
"I kick in my sleep."
"You always did."
A reluctant smile appeared.
"Was I annoying?"
"Unbearable."
"Did you like me?"
The question hurt more than she intended.
Reed looked out the window.
"You were the best thing in that house."
Maisie's smile disappeared.
Reed continued, quieter.
"Our father was difficult. Our mother spent half her life trying to keep peace. Silas was always around. Everyone wanted something. You didn't. You wanted me to build forts and steal peaches from the kitchen."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"So the terrifying Reed Ashford stole peaches?"
"Once."
Pierce spoke from the front seat.
"I am saving this information for blackmail."
Reed said, "I know where you live."
"See? There he is."
The brief warmth lasted until they reached the old Ashford boathouse.
It stood at the edge of a private cove beneath gray afternoon clouds, weathered but intact.
Reed had not been there in years.
Inside, the air smelled of salt, rope, and old wood.
He walked directly toward the back wall.
"The blue boat was here."
Maisie moved beside him.
"What happened to it?"
"I took it out during a storm. Cracked the keel on a rock. Father was furious. Mother hid my punishment report behind a loose board because she thought it was funny."
Pierce tapped the wall.
"Your mother sounds increasingly like the only sane Ashford."
Reed found the loose panel.
Behind it was a steel compartment.
The lock had rusted, but the hinges remained strong.
Pierce's men opened it.
Inside were three ledger books, two envelopes, a small key, and a medical identification bracelet.
Maisie reached for the bracelet.
The plastic had yellowed with age.
The printed name read:
EVELYN ASHFORD.
Admission date: October 10, 2005.
Two days after the fire.
Facility: St. Catherine Behavioral Center, Providence County.
Maisie whispered, "Our mother survived."
Reed stared at the bracelet.
His face became completely empty.
Pierce looked through one of the ledgers.
"Silas was paying St. Catherine through a shell company. Monthly. For nine years. Then payments transferred to Halcyon Living."
Reed's eyes lifted.
"Where is she now?"
Pierce was already searching.
The answer came quickly.
"Halcyon North, Vermont. Private wing. Patient listed as Eleanor Bell. No photograph."
Maisie gripped Reed's arm.
"We have to go."
He did not move.
"Reed?"
His breathing had changed.
He stared at the bracelet as if the small strip of plastic were more dangerous than a gun.
"Twenty-one years," he said.
Maisie understood.
If their mother was alive, then Reed had not simply failed to save his family.
Someone had stolen them from him while he was grieving.
"We go now," he said.
Pierce closed the ledger.
Before anyone moved, a shot cracked outside.
One of Reed's guards shouted.
Then another voice yelled from the dock.
"Fire!"
Smoke began pouring beneath the boathouse door.
Maisie froze.
For one terrible second, the room vanished.
She was six again.
Curtains burning.
A hand around her wrist.
A silver sparrow ring.
A man's voice near her ear.
Your brother left you.
Maisie screamed.
"Silas!"
Reed grabbed her shoulders.
"What?"
Her eyes were wide with memory.
"He was there. I remember him."
Outside, flames climbed the dock.
Maisie looked at her brother.
"He didn't rescue me from the fire."
May you like
Her voice shook.
"He took me from you."
