The Child Who Remembered Me

CHAPTER NINE

The Child Who Remembered Me

“Mummy?”

The voice came from somewhere behind me.

Small. Fragile. Familiar in a way that made my chest ache before my mind could explain why.

I turned so quickly that the photograph slipped from my fingers and landed face down on the floor.

Nobody stood in the doorway.

Nobody stood behind the woman in black.

Yet I could still hear it.

Mummy.

My throat tightened. I pressed a hand against my mouth, fighting the sudden, ridiculous urge to cry.

“Who said that?”

Neither Adrian nor the woman answered.

I looked at them again. The woman had gone pale, her eyes fixed on Adrian with an expression that looked dangerously close to hatred. Adrian, meanwhile, had moved between us. He wasn’t looking at me anymore.

He was staring at the empty doorway.

“Get out,” he told the woman.

She laughed once, without humour.

“You still think you can give orders and make the past disappear?”

“Not now.”

“When would be convenient, Adrian? After you’ve made her forget another ten years? After you’ve convinced her that loving you is the same thing as being safe with you?”

“Enough.”

The word cracked through the room.

I flinched.

Adrian noticed. Something in his face changed, and for one brief moment I saw the man I remembered from somewhere beyond my reach. The man who had once looked at me as though losing me would be worse than death.

Then the expression vanished.

He turned to me.

“Elena, listen to me. Whatever you hear tonight, don’t leave this room alone.”

I stared at him.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue.

That frightened me more than if he had.

I bent to retrieve the photograph. My fingers trembled as I turned it over again.

The little girl stood between Adrian and me, holding both our hands. She had dark curls, a tiny gap between her front teeth, and eyes that seemed too serious for a child her age.

I knew those eyes.

Not because I remembered her face, but because I had seen them somewhere else.

In the mirror.

The girl in the photograph had the same eyes as the reflection that had been waiting for me in the oldest mirror. The reflection that had smiled when I cried. The reflection that had moved when I stood perfectly still.

I brought the photograph closer.

On the back, someone had written a date.

October 14, 1897.

My stomach turned.

“No,” I whispered.

The woman stepped towards me. “You remember something.”

“I don’t know what I remember.”

“Look at the date.”

“I can read.”

“Then ask him why a photograph of the three of you exists on a date when the child was supposedly dead.”

I looked at Adrian.

He didn’t deny it.

That silence was an answer of its own.

“Who is she?” I asked.

Adrian’s gaze fell to the photograph.

“Her name was Lily.”

“Was?”

His eyes lifted to mine.

“Elena—”

“Don’t say my name like that. Don’t use it to make me feel something I don’t understand. Tell me who she was.”

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then he answered.

“She was our daughter.”

The room seemed to tilt.

I took one step backwards.

“No.”

“I know how that sounds.”

“No, you don’t.” My voice rose, breaking at the edges. “You don’t know anything about what this feels like. You tell me I was a doctor, that I was married to you, that I had a daughter. You show me photographs of a life I can’t remember and expect me to stand here as if someone hasn’t cut pieces out of my mind.”

“I never expected that.”

“Then what did you expect?”

His expression twisted.

“For you to survive.”

The answer struck harder than I expected.

I hated that it did.

I hated that a part of me still wanted to reach for him, even when every new truth he gave me made him look less like the man I could trust.

The woman in black shook her head.

“That’s what he always says. Survival. As if keeping you breathing gives him the right to decide what kind of life you deserve.”

Adrian turned on her.

“You know nothing about what happened that night.”

“I know you were there.”

“And so were you.”

The woman’s mouth closed.

For the first time since she had arrived, she looked afraid.

I noticed it immediately.

“What does he mean?”

She glanced at me, then at the photograph.

“I came to help you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know.”

“Were you there when Lily died?”

Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t look away.

“Yes.”

The word fell between us.

I couldn’t breathe properly.

“And Adrian?”

“Yes.”

I turned towards him.

He looked as though he wanted to reach for me, but he kept his hands at his sides.

“Did you kill her?”

“No.”

The answer came without hesitation.

I wanted to believe him.

That was the worst part.

I wanted to believe him so desperately that I couldn’t tell whether the feeling came from my own heart or from whatever remained of the woman I had been before my memories were taken from me.

“Then who did?”

The woman in black opened her mouth.

Before she could answer, the lights went out.

Darkness swallowed the room.

I heard the scrape of a chair, the sharp sound of glass breaking, and Adrian shouting my name.

Something brushed my wrist.

I screamed and pulled away.

A hand closed around mine.

“It’s me,” Adrian said. “Don’t move.”

I tried to wrench free.

“Let go.”

“There’s broken glass everywhere.”

“I said let go!”

His grip loosened immediately.

For one strange second, neither of us moved.

Then a faint light appeared across the room.

The oldest mirror had begun to glow.

Not brightly. Not enough to illuminate the walls. Just enough to reveal a pale figure standing inside its dark surface.

A little girl.

Dark curls. Small hands. A white dress.

Lily.

I forgot the broken glass beneath my feet. I forgot the woman beside me. I forgot Adrian’s warning.

The child lifted her head.

“Mummy,” she whispered again.

My knees nearly gave way.

“Lily?”

The name escaped me before I could stop it.

Adrian went utterly still.

The girl pressed her palm against the other side of the mirror.

I raised mine to meet it.

The glass was cold.

Then a voice came from behind me.

Not Adrian’s.

Not the woman’s.

My own.

“You promised you wouldn’t let her see me.”

I spun around.

Nobody stood there.

But the mirror had changed.

The little girl was gone.

In her place stood a woman with my face, wearing a bloodstained dress. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, and a thin red line ran from her temple to her jaw.

She looked exhausted.

She looked terrified.

And she looked directly at me.

“Don’t trust him,” she whispered.

I stared at my reflection.

“Who are you?”

Her eyes shifted towards Adrian.

“I’m the reason he keeps bringing you back.”

Adrian stepped forward.

“Close your eyes, Elena.”

The woman in the mirror smiled sadly.

“Ask him what happened on the staircase.”

My heart began to pound.

I remembered the staircase.

Not all of it. Just fragments. A hand gripping mine. A key pressed into my palm. Blood on white marble.

And someone crying.

Someone begging me not to go.

I looked at Adrian.

“What happened on the staircase?”

He didn’t answer.

The woman in the mirror pressed both hands against the glass.

“He told you I died because you failed to save me.”

My breath caught.

“But I didn’t die, Elena.”

The mirror trembled.

“I was the one who killed Lily.”

For a moment, the entire world became silent.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. The words made no sense, yet something deep inside me reacted as though I had heard them before.

I looked at the photograph still clutched in my hand.

The little girl smiled up at me.

Then I looked at the woman in the mirror.

“Why would I kill my own daughter?”

Her expression crumpled.

“Because she wasn’t supposed to be born.”

Behind me, Adrian whispered my name.

But I was no longer looking at him.

The woman in the mirror leaned closer, her forehead almost touching the glass.

“Listen carefully. You have been asking the wrong question all this time.”

A crack appeared across the mirror, running from the top to the centre of her face.

“You keep asking what Adrian did to you.”

The crack widened.

“But you should be asking what you did to him.”

The glass shattered.

I screamed as fragments rained across the floor.

Adrian pulled me against him, shielding my face with his body. For one brief second, I let him hold me. I buried my fingers in his shirt because the world had become too frightening to stand in alone.

Then I felt something hard pressing against my palm.

A key.

I looked down.

It was the same old brass key I had seen in my fragmented memories.

I hadn’t been holding it a moment ago.

Adrian felt me go still.

His arms loosened.

Slowly, I stepped away from him.

“What does this open?”

He looked at the key.

All the colour drained from his face.

“Elena, give it to me.”

I closed my fingers around it.

“No.”

“Please.”

That single word frightened me more than his anger ever could.

Adrian Vale, the man who seemed to know every secret in the house, was afraid of a little brass key.

And now I knew why.

Across the room, beneath the broken mirror, a narrow door had appeared in the wall.

I was certain it hadn’t been there before.

A faint sound came from behind it.

Three soft knocks.

Then a child’s voice spoke from the other side.

“Mummy, he told you I was dead.”

My eyes filled with tears.

The voice trembled.

“But I’m still here.”

Adrian caught my wrist.

This time, he wasn’t trying to protect me.

He was trying to stop me.

“Whatever you do,” he whispered, “do not open that door.”

I looked at the key in my hand.

Then at the man I had once loved.

And for the first time since waking up without my memories, I understood something with absolute certainty.

Adrian wasn’t afraid of what I would discover about the past.

He was afraid of what I would remember.