Page 10 of The Inheritance At Bourton

Rowan reached through the opening and felt along the inside wall. A moment later, a light came on, a single bare bulb hanging from a cord, the kind of light that belonged in a cellar.

The room was about the size of a walk-in closet. That was her first thought. It was maybe four feet deep and eight feet wide, with bare stone on one wall and old plaster on the other. Boxes covered every inch of the floor.

Boxes were stacked two or three high. Some were sturdy banker's boxes, while others were old cardboard boxes with soft corners. Each one was labeled.

"It's the family archive," Rowan said quietly from the doorway. "The real one.”

She hardly heard him. Her eyes moved past the years, down the row, to a box set apart on the floor with nothing on top. It looked as if it had been taken down and put back more often than the others.

It didn't have a year on it.

It had her name.

LEAH. She stood there, looking at it, and couldn’t make her legs move.

"Leah." Rowan's voice was very quiet.

"I’m fine.”

She wasn't. She forced herself to walk into the room.

“Let’s take it into the library,” Rowan said softly. “Warmer. Better light.”

He moved past her and picked it up. He stared at her until she finally turned and walked back into the warmth of the library.

Rowan put the box on the floor, one of the few spaces not covered by books.

She knelt and pulled the box toward her. Rowan sat beside her. She lifted the lid off, and the first thing she saw was a manila envelope, creased with age, unsealed, the flap tucked in. She lifted it out, opened it, and slid the contents onto her lap.

A typed report. Several pages, stapled. At the top of the first page was a letterhead she didn't recognize—a Seattle firm.

She read it. Client: William Ellsworth. Below that, subject names. Her mother's name. And then hers. Leah Ellsworth, age twelve.

The date on the report put her in sixth grade.

It listed a school—her middle school, the one with portables out back and a chain-link fence. It listed an address, an apartment complex she could barely remember. She did remember the broken concrete stairs where she'd skinned her knee so badly her mother took her for stitches. It listed her mother's workplace. She turned the page, and a photograph slipped onto her lap.

It was her. Standing outside the school fence with her backpack on, the purple jacket she'd gotten at Goodwill and worn until the cuffs frayed. She was looking off to the side at something. The photo had been taken from somewhere close. Across the parking lot. From a car.

She had never seen the camera.

No one took her picture when she was growing up. School photos cost money, and they never had enough, so whole years of her childhood were missing. She accepted that long ago. Food and electricity mattered more than photos of her frizzy hair and crooked smile.

Rowan took the paper from her while she reached back into the box.

“A birthday card,” she whispered.

There was a stamp in the corner—an airmail stamp, affixed, ready. There was no postmark. He had written the card, sealed it, stamped it, and carried it as far as the hidden room and no further.

She turned it over and over in her hands. She didn't open it. She couldn't. She wasn't ready. She set it down and stared at the filled box. She knew there would be more proof of her life. A life lived without her father.

Underneath the card were newspaper clippings.

The first was from a small local paper, the kind that printed honor rolls, yard sales, and the school lunch menus. It was the listing for a school play. The cast names ran in two columns, and hers was near the bottom of the second column. It was circled in blue ink. She remembered that play. She'd had one line. The train's coming. She had practiced it in the bathroom mirror for a week. And on her big night, she messed up her only line.

Her mother hadn’t been there. Leah couldn’t remember where her mother had been, but she knew she hadn’t been there.

Her father had known about the play.