That’s what she misses. The electric shiver of a great idea. The whir of her thoughts as her mind races through the possibilities. The pride of a perfectly worded line. The way time stops, and falls away, and it’s just her, and the story.
That’s what she wants to get back.
And maybe she can.
After all, Sienna Buchanan—soon to be Wood—doesn’t have to follow in her husband’s footsteps.
Sienna Buchanan—soon to be Wood—could write anything. She could write romance. Or historical. Or she could write thrillers becauseshewants to.
She realizes Kenzo is still waiting for an answer.
She lets out a nervous laugh. “I guess that,” she says, “is the million-dollar question.”
“Two million,” counters Kenzo, “if you count the money for Fletch’s ending.”
Sienna has just opened her mouth to marvel at the sum when she notices something odd about the model house. She was so taken by the other details—but still, she can’t believe it took her so long to pick up on it.
There’s a third floor.
Not a big one, but a kind of attic space, a hollow turret, on her side of the house. Large enough for a single room. The other bedrooms are all neat and tidy. This one alone has been rendered differently, as if it’s lived in. The bed, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, and yet so detailed she can see the carvings in the wooden headboard, the duvet thrown back, as if its occupant has just gotten up.
There’s something oddly ascetic about the space. It’s smaller than the other rooms, and sparsely decorated. A black typewriter sits on a narrow desk before the open window, and a handful of loose papers are scattered like leaves over the rug, across the floor, as if the breeze has blown them off the table.
But it’s the tiny red hat hanging on the desk chair that tells Sienna what she already suspects.
“That was his room,” she says softly, and she can’t help but imagine that this is how it looked, the day he died. She pictures Arthur Fletch flinging back the duvet, getting dressed, and heading out for his swim, rapping his knuckles on the stack of pages on his way out, a promise that he’d come back and finish what he started.
There’s a door, leading onto a hidden set of stairs that runs down from the attic room to the second floor—her wing. Which doesn’t make sense. There are only three doors on that wing. Jaxon’s, Millie’s, and theirs.
But then Kenzo leans in and touches a spot on the patterned wall between Millie’s and Jaxon’s rooms, and a small door, disguised by the paper, pops open.
“I found it last night. The actual door, I mean.”
He says it like it’s nothing, but for the first time, Sienna feels a nervous prickle. “Last night?” For a second she’s back in bed, being woken by the scream, rushing toward Millie’s room, where someone, somehow, got in.
“I spent most of the day looking around, trying to get inspired. This isn’t my genre, after all. I needed to get in the right headspace.” Kenzo’s tone is still casual. “I found the door on the model, first, and went to check it out after everyone went to bed, but it was locked.”
Sienna frowns. “Was that before or after you snuck the note into Millie’s room?”
Kenzo’s expression flickers, first surprise, then hurt. “That wasn’t me.”
“You said you liked scaring the shit out of people.”
The hurt vanishes, replaced by his usual dry humor. “Ah, mine own words, come back to haunt me. I do. Inbooks. But I don’t make a habit of—”
“Has anyone seen Sisi?”
Malcolm’s voice echoes through the house.
For a moment Sienna stays where she is, crouched behind the model.
“Need me to fall on the sword?” asks Kenzo. “Or send him on a wild goose chase? Or lead him down the garden path? Sorry, I’m running out of sayings.”
She sighs and gets to her feet. “Thanks, but I’ll bite the bullet. Or face the music. Fight my own battles. Or—fuck, I can’t think of any more.”
“And they call us wordsmiths.”
Kenzo swings the model closed and follows Sienna back into the kitchen.
