"On their wedding night, Audrey’s scream tore through the family house.

I had no idea what box Sienna meant.

Audrey did.

She sat down on the bakery steps as if her legs had stopped working. Julian knelt beside her but waited before touching her.

“Our mother had a wooden box,” Audrey said. “She kept letters and photographs in it. Dad told us he burned it after she died.”

“Did he?” I asked.

“Sienna says he didn’t. I thought she was remembering wrong.”

A police car turned onto Mill Street. The officer spoke with Audrey, then called in Sienna’s message. He asked about Daniel’s car, friends, and any property where he might take her.

Audrey gave him an old address outside Richmond.

“He sold that house,” she said. “I don’t know where he lives now.”

“Where would the box be?” Julian asked.

“Sienna said she hid it from him.”

“When?”

“Before she left his house last year.”

Audrey looked toward the bakery window. Her reflection stared back at her, pale and frightened beneath the streetlamp.

“She told me it was in a place he’d never think to look. I was so busy trying to get her settled that I never asked where.”

The officer said his colleagues were checking nearby cameras. He asked us to return home in case Sienna came there. I hated leaving Mill Street, but our porch was the one place she had tried to reach.

On the drive, I kept thinking about the note at our door. Sienna had written the address of St. Agnes beneath her question. She wanted Julian to know where Audrey had taken her. Yet she had also left a charm to help us follow her.

“She wanted us to find her,” I said aloud.

Julian turned toward me.

“She knew he would come after the box.”

“And she wanted us to know why,” Audrey said.

Back at the house, Richard had turned off the music and cleared the last glasses from the kitchen. He had left every light on.

I found Sienna’s note on the table and looked at it again.

The writing was uneven because she had been rushing. But the paper bothered me. It came from our guest book, which had been on the hall table until the reception ended.

“Who found this?” I asked Julian.

“I did. It was pushed under the front door.”

“When?”

“Just before Audrey screamed.”

I looked at the clock. Sienna’s call from Mill Street had come nearly an hour later.

She had reached our house before Daniel caught her. She must have hidden the box somewhere nearby.

I went to the guest book table. Beneath it stood the wooden chest where we stored extra blankets for visitors. Its lid was closed, and a dried flower from the wedding lay on top.

I opened it.

The blankets were untouched.

Audrey joined me. She scanned the entryway, then looked at the coat rack.

“Sienna was here today,” she said. “She left her coat after the ceremony.”

The coat was gone. During the reception, I had placed forgotten items in the pantry so guests wouldn’t trip over them.

We hurried into the kitchen. Richard opened the pantry door. A pale blue coat hung from a hook behind it.

Audrey reached into the pockets. She found a bus ticket and a packet of tissues. Then her fingers brushed a seam that had been stitched shut with dark thread.

“Sienna sews when she’s nervous,” she said.

Richard brought scissors. Audrey opened the seam and drew out a small brass key.

A piece of masking tape wrapped around it bore two numbers: 24.

Julian leaned against the counter.

“Storage unit?”

“Maybe,” Audrey said. “But she doesn’t have one.”

Richard held the key beneath the light. “This is for an older lock. Could be a locker.”

I remembered a row of lockers in the basement of St. Agnes. Richard’s aunt had kept her knitting in one when she lived there.

I called Maribel.

“Number twenty-four?” she repeated. “That locker belongs to Sienna.”

Maribel checked it while we stayed on the line. I heard metal doors opening.

“It’s empty,” she said.

Audrey shut her eyes.

“Look at the top,” she told her. “And under the shelf.”

Maribel searched again.

“There’s a sheet of paper taped underneath.”

She read a street name and a number. It was the address of a storage facility near the Richmond bus depot.

“Is there anything else?” I asked.

Maribel paused.

“Yes. A note. It says Audrey will know which birthday.”

Audrey stared at the calendar on our wall.

“Mom’s,” she said. “November twenty-fourth.”

The storage unit number was 24. Sienna had given us the date to help us identify the right unit if Daniel found the address too.

Julian picked up his keys.

“We should tell the police first,” I said.

He stopped. He nodded, though every part of him seemed ready to run.

The officer asked us to stay at the house while they checked the facility. Audrey agreed, then spent the next forty minutes pacing between the kitchen and the front window.

I made tea nobody drank.

At 2:11 in the morning, the officer called. The storage office was closed, and the manager was on his way with a key. They had found no sign of Sienna.

At 2:26, a car pulled into our driveway.

For one hopeful instant, Audrey ran toward the door.

It was a taxi.

A woman stepped out carrying a canvas bag. She looked around sixty, with gray hair escaping a loose braid. Audrey stopped so suddenly that I nearly collided with her.

“Who is that?” I asked.

Audrey’s face drained of color.

“My mother’s sister,” she said. “She hasn’t spoken to us in fourteen years.”