Chapter 1
I came home early and heard my nearly silent son say a sentence that destroyed my marriage.
My meetings in Chicago had ended before noon, so I returned to Manhattan without telling anyone.
I expected the penthouse to be quiet.
Instead, I heard my sons crying before the elevator doors fully opened.
Leo and Noah were four years old.
They had barely spoken since the night they were born.
Doctors called it trauma-related mutism, though no one could explain what two newborn babies had experienced badly enough to silence them for years.
I ran toward the family room.
Both boys were wrapped around our new maid.
Anna Keller had worked for us for only three weeks. She was kneeling on the marble floor while Leo and Noah buried their faces against her apron.
Victoria stood over them.
“Get away from my children!”
Anna tightened her arms protectively.
“They’re frightened.”
“Because you confused them.”
Victoria reached for Leo.
He screamed.
I had never heard that sound from him.
“Stop,” I said.
Everyone turned.
Victoria’s anger vanished for half a second.
“Julian, you weren’t supposed to be home.”
“What happened?”
“This woman has become obsessed with the boys. She keeps touching them and humming to them.”
Anna looked at me.
Her gray eyes were full of fear.
“I was putting away their clothes. Mrs. Sterling came in and ordered me to leave immediately.”
“She was going through private things,” Victoria snapped.
“I found medication hidden beneath Noah’s mattress.”
My attention shifted to Victoria.
“What medication?”
“Vitamins.”
Anna shook her head.
“The label was removed.”
Victoria pointed toward the elevator.
“Fire her.”
Leo lifted his face.
Tears covered his cheeks.
“No, Daddy.”
I stopped breathing.
His voice was weak, but the words were clear.
I had waited four years to hear my son call me Daddy.
Now he was using the word to beg me not to send away a woman he had known for three weeks.
I crouched beside him.
“What did you say?”
“Don’t make her leave.”
Victoria stared at him.
Noah held Anna tighter.
Leo pointed toward my wife.
“She’s more like Mommy than she is.”
Victoria went completely still.
My sons had called Victoria Mommy since they were toddlers, though they rarely said it aloud.
She forced a laugh.
“He doesn’t understand.”
Leo pressed his face against Anna’s shoulder.
“She sings us the secret song.”
Silence swallowed the room.
I looked at Anna.
“What song?”
Her lips parted, but no answer came.
Victoria grabbed her arm.
“Get out.”
Anna pulled free.
The movement exposed a thin scar around her wrist.
Then she began humming.
The melody struck me so hard I had to grip the back of a chair.
It was not a nursery rhyme.
It had never been released or recorded.
Emma Reed wrote it five years earlier while she was carrying my sons.
She sang it every night with my hand resting against her stomach.
Only three people had heard the full melody.
Emma.
Me.
And the unborn twins.
Emma died during an emergency delivery at St. Catherine’s Hospital.
I had identified her body through a glass window after a fire damaged the maternity wing.
I buried her four days later.
“How do you know that song?” I whispered.
Anna touched her temple.
“I don’t know.”
Victoria stepped between us.
“She heard you humming it.”
“I haven’t sung it since Emma died.”
“Then a staff member taught her.”
“No staff member knew it.”
Anna’s breathing became uneven.
“I’ve heard it in my dreams for years.”
Victoria seized a porcelain sculpture from the table.
She raised it toward Anna.
I caught her wrist.
“What are you doing?”
“She is dangerous.”
“She is kneeling with two terrified children while you hold a weapon.”
Victoria released the sculpture.
It struck the carpet without breaking.
Anna stood slowly.
Leo and Noah remained beside her.
“I should leave,” she said.
“No.”
Victoria turned on me.
“You are choosing a servant over your wife?”
“I am asking why you’re terrified of a song.”
“I’m terrified because a stranger has manipulated our sons.”
Anna rubbed her scar.
“I woke in a private clinic four years ago with no identification and almost no memory. They told me my name was Anna.”
My heart began pounding.
“What clinic?”
“Greenwood Recovery Center in Connecticut.”
Victoria looked toward the elevator.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Anna stared at her.
“I didn’t say you had.”
Victoria’s face lost its color again.
I asked Anna to sing the rest.
She hesitated.
Then her soft voice continued beyond the melody.
Two little stars beneath my heart, wait for morning, never part.
Those words were not part of the lullaby Emma usually sang.
She whispered them once in the hospital elevator when the twins kicked at the same time.
I had answered with a final line.
Even in darkness, I’ll know where you are.
Anna looked directly at me.
Then she sang my line.
My knees nearly failed.
Victoria backed away.
“This proves nothing.”
Anna touched the side of her neck.
“There’s something else.”
She pulled back her collar.
A crescent-shaped birthmark rested beneath her left ear.
Emma had the same mark.
I had kissed it hundreds of times.
“No,” Victoria whispered.
Leo reached toward the mark.
“Mommy star.”
“How does he know that?” I asked.
Anna began crying.
“I don’t know.”
Victoria suddenly ran toward the elevator.
I blocked her path.
“Where are you going?”
“To call security.”
“No one leaves.”
“You cannot imprison me.”
“And you cannot threaten a woman in front of my sons.”
I called my private physician and the police.
Victoria laughed bitterly.
“You think that maid is Emma because she knows a song?”
“I think you know more than you’re saying.”
Anna swayed.
I caught her before she fell.
The moment my hand touched her waist, an image flashed across her face.
“Blue doors,” she whispered.
“What?”
“The hospital room had blue doors.”
St. Catherine’s maternity wing had blue doors before the fire.
Anna gripped my sleeve.
“You were there.”
“Yes.”
“You were shouting my name.”
Victoria’s phone fell from her hand.
Its screen lit up.
A message appeared from my father.
Charles Sterling had been chairman of Sterling International until I replaced him two years earlier.
The message read:
If the maid remembers the blue doors, move the boys tonight.
I looked at Victoria.
She tried to grab the phone.
I reached it first.
“What does my father know about Anna?”
“Nothing.”
Another message arrived.
The body at St. Catherine’s has already been questioned once. We cannot survive a second examination.
Anna stared at the screen.
“What body?”
I called Detective Lena Morales, a family friend I trusted.
Then I ordered security to lock down the elevator.
Victoria moved toward Leo.
He hid behind Anna.
“Don’t let her give us the blue milk,” he whispered.
“What blue milk?” I asked.
Noah covered his mouth as if he had said too much.
Anna knelt beside him.
“You’re safe.”
He touched her cheek.
May you like
Then he spoke clearly for the first time in my life.
“She made us forget Mommy.”
