Chapter 26 - The Music Box
Sleep was impossible. By three in the morning, the rain had tapered off into an eerie, thick mountain fog that swallowed the streetlights.
I walked up the creaking stairs to Lily’s room. She wasn't asleep; she was sitting on her woven rug by the cedar chest, by the faint glow of a small desk lamp. In her lap was Arthur’s childhood music box—an antique wooden chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl that my father had given me before he passed away.
"Mom," Lily whispered, looking up with her hazel eyes that looked so much like Arthur’s. "Grandpa Arthur told me a secret about this box before he died. He said if bad men ever came to take the bakery, I had to press the brass rose on the bottom."
My breath hitched. "What did you say, Lily?"
"He told me never to tell Grandma Carol because it would hurt her feelings," Lily said, her voice trembling slightly. "He said Grandma was scared of shadows, but I had to be brave."
I knelt beside my daughter, my heart hammering against my ribs. I took the music box carefully in my hands. The box played a delicate, melancholy tune—a French lullaby Arthur used to whistle when kneading bread in the early mornings.
I turned the heavy walnut box upside down. In the corner was a tiny carved brass rose, no larger than a dime. I pressed down hard with my thumb.
With a sharp *click*, a false bottom popped open, releasing the scent of dried lavender and aged cedar.
Inside lay not money or jewels, but a single folded sheet of onionskin paper and a black-and-white photograph.
The photograph showed my father in his late twenties, looking handsome but pale, standing beside a glamorous, aristocratic woman with cold, haughty eyes. On the back was written in faded fountain pen ink: *Evelyn, Lausanne, 1969.*
I unfolded the paper with trembling fingers. It was written in Arthur’s familiar, elegant cursive:
May you like
*To whoever holds this truth,*
*Richard Sterling did not merely covet my land; he coveted Evelyn. When she betrayed me, she did not run alone. She ran into the arms of the Sterling family syndicate. If a child bearing my name ever appears on their arm, look at her hands. The curse of the Vance blood is not in our ledgers, but in our bones. And Richard Sterling has harbored a lie for forty years that will destroy him if brought to light.*