Chapter 54: The Child Who Remembered

 

“Gabriel,” Rhys repeated.

Brandt turned his phone facedown. “The filename is a lead, not proof. Someone named the recording. We don't know who, or when the conversation happened.”

“But Conrad said my father brought the boy.” Rhys looked toward the window. “He brought Gabriel to a man who was already hurting him.”

Elara remembered the broken wooden horse and Sylvie's tired hands.

“Then we should ask Gabriel's mother what happened before Marcus disappeared.”

 

Sylvie listened to the recording in the guarded ward without interrupting. When Conrad's voice ended, she shut her eyes.

“I told Marcus not to take Gabriel,” she said.

Rhys gripped the back of a chair. “When?”

“October 2004. A few days before the boat.” Her voice cracked. “Marcus came to my apartment and asked for one afternoon. He said he had finally found a way to make the doctors answer for what they'd done.”

“Did you agree?” Elara asked.

“I refused. Gabriel heard us arguing.” Sylvie twisted the edge of her blanket. “He went to the door himself. He wanted to help his father.”

“Where did Marcus take him?”

“Saint-Claire. He said they were meeting someone who could identify the records.”

Elara glanced at Brandt. That would explain a frightened boy in a clinic corridor. It did not explain the forged authorization or the man in the hospital bed.

“Did Gabriel come home?” she asked.

Sylvie nodded. “Marcus brought him back before dark. Gabriel wouldn't tell me what happened. He sat on the floor with that little horse and knocked it against the tiles. Three times. Then twice.”

Rhys stared at the toy in his palm.

“He'd never done that before?”

“Not where I could hear him.” Sylvie covered her mouth. “He kept saying, ‘Don't let them make me forget.’”

“Did he say who threatened him?” Brandt asked.

“No. And when the police came to tell me Marcus was missing, Gabriel hid under his bed. He wouldn't come out until I promised never to send him back to Saint-Claire.” Sylvie drew a shaking breath. “I kept that promise. But I couldn't protect him from the memories.”

Elara looked at Rhys. He had gone pale, but he was listening.

 

Outside the ward, Rhys stopped so suddenly Elara nearly walked into him.

“He knew,” Rhys said. “Gabriel knew something when he was eight. All this time, I've been searching for documents, and he's been carrying it alone.”

“He may not remember everything.”

“I know.” Rhys pressed his fingers against his temples. “I just want to find him.”

Elara did too. But she had watched people turn fear into a weapon, and she would not make Gabriel another prisoner of their questions.

“We sent him a message,” she said. “Now we let him decide.”

Rhys looked at her. “Even if he never answers?”

“Even then.”

He leaned against the wall, exhausted. After a moment, he offered her his hand.

“You're better at this than I am.”

“At waiting?”

“At remembering other people are allowed to say no.”

“And you're learning.”

“Slowly,” he admitted.

She took his hand. A month ago, she would have heard a compliment like that and searched for the price hidden inside it. With Rhys, the words stayed where he'd placed them.

 

Brandt met them by the lifts.

“The hospital has verified that Marcus collected a child from Sylvie's address that afternoon,” he said. “The old security log survived. It doesn't say where they went.”

“Then we have one fact,” Elara replied.

“And a second,” Brandt said. “Julian's solicitor has delivered another item: a sealed letter addressed to you, Elara. Julian left instructions that it be opened if he failed to appear.”

“Has he been found?”

“Not yet.”

Elara took the envelope but did not open it. Julian had spent years deciding which truths she was permitted to see. She would not let another message from him dictate the next move.

“Log it with the investigation,” she said. “I'll read it with my solicitor.”

Brandt nodded.

Then his radio crackled. An officer announced that someone had arrived at the secured entrance, asking for Sylvie Laurent.

“No identification,” the officer said. “But he knows about the wooden horse.”

Rhys went utterly still.

Brandt asked the visitor to remain where he was. They walked down together, past the nurses' station and the locked glass doors.

A man stood beyond them, dark-haired, thin, perhaps thirty. He lifted his hands when he saw the officer approach.

Rhys stopped on the other side of the glass.

The stranger tapped three times against the doorframe.

Then twice.

“Gabriel?” Rhys whispered.

The man nodded, tears shining in his eyes.

“I remember the day Father disappeared,” he said through the intercom. “And Rhys, you were there too.”