Chapter 48: The Nurse's Log

We drove back to the lake house in silence, the dread in the car thick enough to choke on. The police had already cordoned off the area around the boathouse, their blue lights reflecting off the black water. But the cabin was dark, the front door hanging open like a broken jaw.

"He's not here," Ben said, cutting the engine. "If he was, there would be an ambulance."

We walked to the porch, stepping over the shattered glass. The room was empty. The table where Mark had been tied was overturned. The poker was gone.

"Where did he go?" I whispered.

Ben walked to the fireplace. He knelt, picking something out of the ashes.

It was a piece of cloth. A scrap of a white polo shirt.

It was stained with blood.

"He was hurt," Ben said. "And he was moving."

He followed the trail of blood drops. They led out the back door, away from the lake, into the woods.

"He went to the greenhouse," I said. "He said he burned the ledger there."

We followed the trail, our flashlights cutting through the trees. The greenhouse was a skeleton of twisted metal and shattered glass, still smoking in the damp night air.

But there was no body. No Mark.

Just a pile of ash in the center of the concrete floor.

Ben sifted through it with a stick. "Paper," he said. "Lots of it. He really did burn it."

"Not all of it," a voice said from the shadows.

We spun around.

Mark was sitting on a fallen log at the edge of the clearing. He was holding his side, his face pale and slick with sweat. But he was alive.

"Mark," I breathed, rushing to him.

He flinched as I touched his arm. "Careful. I think she broke a rib."

"Edith?"

He nodded. "Before she ran. She... she hit me with the poker."

He looked at the smoking ruin of the greenhouse.

"I tried to stop her," he said. "I tried to tell her it was over. But she just laughed. She said the game wasn't over until the last piece was played."

"The spare," I said. "She texted me. She said I forgot the spare."

Mark looked at me. His eyes were dark, unreadable.

"She meant me," he said. "She was going to kill me, Sarah. She was going to burn me with the books."

"But you got away," Ben said.

"I crawled," Mark said. "I crawled out the back while she was pouring the gasoline. She didn't see me."

He reached into his pocket.

"And I took something."

He pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook. It wasn't the ledger. It was older. Worn.

"What is that?" I asked.

"It's a diary," Mark said. "Not Clara's. Not Edith's."

He handed it to me.

*Property of Alice Miller.*

Ben gasped. He reached out, his fingers trembling as he touched the cover. "My sister's diary."

"I found it in the greenhouse," Mark said. "Edith kept it. Like a trophy. It was in a metal box under the potting bench."

I opened the book. The handwriting was neat, careful.

*July 14, 1988.*
*The baby is kicking so much today. Michael says he's going to be a soccer player. He's so happy. He says he's going to leave Edith. He says we're going to be a real family.*

I flipped forward.

*August 1, 1988.*
*Edith knows. She came to the cottage today. She didn't yell. She just smiled. She said she had a solution. A way for everyone to get what they want.*

*August 15, 1988.*
*The solution is a lie. She wants the baby. She wants me to sign him over. She says if I don't, she'll ruin Michael. She'll tell the board about the embezzlement.*

I looked up at Ben. "Embezzlement?"

"Michael was skimming," Ben said softly. "Everyone knew it. But Archibald covered it up. To protect the name."

I read the last entry.

*September 1, 1988.*
*I'm leaving tonight. Michael is meeting me at the station. We're going to Canada. Edith thinks I'm going to the clinic, but I'm not. I'm not giving him up.*

The entry ended there.

"She never made it to the station," Ben whispered. "Edith intercepted her."

"And she took the baby," I said. "She took Mark."

I looked at Mark. He was staring at the diary, tears streaming down his face.

"She killed her," he said. "She killed my mother because she wouldn't sell me."

He looked up at me.

"But there's something else," he said. "In the back."

I turned to the last page. Tucked into the binding was a folded piece of paper.

It was a printout from a dot-matrix printer. A list of names.

*Nursing Staff - St. Jude's - Maternity Ward - 1988.*

One name was circled in red ink.

*Nurse Elaine Harper.*

Next to the name, in Alice's handwriting, was a note.

*She knows. She saw the charts. She saw the babies.*

"Babies," I whispered. "Plural."

"Elaine Harper," Ben said. "That's the nurse we visited. The one with dementia."

"She remembered 'The Screamer'," I said. "She remembered Clara."

"But she also remembered something else," Mark said. "She remembered a pump."

"A pump?"

"A breast pump," Mark said. "I read the note. Alice wrote that Elaine was trying to get a pump for Clara. Because she was lactating."

I frowned. "But... Clara lost the baby in March. Or July. Depending on which lie you believe. If she was lactating in September..."

"Then she had just given birth," I said.

"Or," Ben said, "she was still nursing."

"Nursing who?" I asked. "Leo was in the basement. I was with Edith. Mark was with Alice."

I looked at the note again. *She saw the babies.*

"There was another baby," I whispered. "A fourth baby."

I thought about the photo in the ledger. *Subject 2.*

"Sofia and Lucia," I said. "The twins. My sisters."

"Lucia died," Ben said. "You saw the report."

"Did she?" I asked. "Or did Edith just say she did?"

I looked at the nurse's name again. Elaine Harper.

"We need to go back to the nursing home," I said. "We need to talk to Elaine. If she's still alive."

"Why wouldn't she be?" Mark asked.

"Because," I said, looking at the smoking ruins of the greenhouse. "Edith is cleaning up loose ends. And Elaine Harper is the last witness who hasn't been burned."