Chapter 10 - The Dead Woman Was Still Waiting
The Vermont facility specialized in private neurological care.
Rebecca Vale lived there.
Margaret did not.
But Rebecca finally told Julian the truth.
Margaret had survived fourteen years after her funeral.
Over time she developed a neurological disease that damaged her memory
and speech.
She had been transferred six months earlier to a private home outside
New Haven.
Rebecca also explained the eerie voice messages.
She and Margaret were sisters.
Their voices were nearly identical.
Old recordings of both women had been stored in the blue room.
Someone had used those recordings to create convincing messages.
The dead woman’s voice had been manufactured.
The stolen authorization code had been real.
Julian and Olivia went to New Haven.
Maya stayed behind.
“This one belongs to you,” she told Julian.
Margaret sat beside a window with a knitted blanket over her knees.
Julian recognized her eyes immediately.
Olivia made a broken sound.
Margaret whispered both their names.
The reunion was not clean.
Julian cried because she was alive.
He was angry because she had stayed away.
He felt relief and betrayal at the same time.
Margaret’s memory came and went.
Some moments she knew Julian was forty-two.
Other moments she thought he was twelve.
During a lucid interview, she confirmed the blue room, Eleanor’s
ownership, Caroline’s identity, and the plan to guide Maya toward the
evidence.
Then Julian asked the question that had started everything.
“Who kept Maya awake?”
Margaret whispered, “Samuel.”
Samuel Price had claimed he only supplied access.
Confronted with Margaret’s statement and server logs, his story
collapsed.
Raymond paid him to intensify Maya’s shifts.
Olivia and Grace each secretly tried to position Maya near the basement.
Samuel combined their instructions with Raymond’s plan.
He copied Olivia’s credential.
He intended Maya to enter the blue room while exhausted.
Then he would trigger the prepared theft complaint.
Maya collapsing at the dining table ruined the timing.
Julian stopping his assistant from waking her ruined the rest.
The conspiracy had failed because one person asked why she could not
stay awake before deciding she was lazy.
Julian never forgot that.
But Margaret had one final warning.
“Raymond wasn’t the beginning.”
“Who was?”
Her eyes filled.
May you like
“David.”
The same name from Robert’s boathouse.
