Chapter 2 - The Forbidden Floor
The third floor of Cole House was shrouded in cold, heavy darkness.
When the elevator doors had been locked two years ago and the climate control set to a stagnant, low baseline, the air up here had taken on the quality of a crypt. It smelled of old carpet, stale air, dry wool, and the lingering, ghostly scent of lavender baby shampoo—a scent that Nathan had tried to scrub from his memory every night for seven hundred days.
Nathan reached the top landing, his lungs burning, his hand clutching the tiny wooden block so tightly the sharp square corners dug deep into his skin.
The long corridor stretched out before him in the dim moonlight filtering through the arched stained-glass window at the far end.
The doors down the hall were closed. All except one.
At the very end of the hall, the white door with the painted wooden nameplate reading S-O-P-H-I-E was standing open about three inches.
A thin strip of light from the corridor outside illuminated the dust motes dancing slowly in the air.
Nathan approached the door as if walking through a minefield.
When he reached the frame, he pushed it open gently. The hinges gave a soft, dry whine.
Inside, the nursery looked almost exactly as it had on the rainy Tuesday when he had strapped Sophie into her car seat for the last time. The small white canopy bed was made. The soft pink rug sat in the center of the room. The wooden bookshelf was filled with picture books about talking animals and brave little girls.
But something was wrong.
Nathan’s sharp eyes scanned the room, picking out details instantly.
The heavy canvas dust sheet that he personally had draped over the large wooden toy chest in the corner had been pulled back.
A small, clear path had been smoothed into the thin layer of dust covering the pink rug.
And sitting right in the middle of the floor, lit by the pale moonbeam, was a small plastic teacup from a child’s tea set, sitting next to a half-finished drawing done in bright yellow crayon on a piece of paper that had been torn from one of Sophie’s old sketchbooks.
Someone had been coming up here.
Not just today.
The path through the dust wasn't new. The dust sheet over the toy chest was folded back neatly at the corner, as if it had been lifted and replaced dozens of times.
Footsteps hurried up the carpeted stairs behind him.
Nathan didn't turn around. He stood in the doorway of his daughter’s preserved sanctuary, staring at the yellow crayon drawing on the floor.
Rachel appeared in the doorway, her chest heaving, her gray uniform apron wrinkled where her hands had been clutching it in terror. Ellie was cradled tightly in her arms, her small face buried against her mother’s neck, sensing that something terrible was happening.
“Mr. Cole...” Rachel breathed, her voice cracking with pure panic. “I swear on my life... I didn't know. I swear to God I didn't know she was coming up here.”
Nathan turned around slowly.
In the faint light of the hallway, his face looked carved from grey stone. Tears had traced wet paths down his cheeks, though his eyes were fierce and burning.
“How did she get up here, Rachel?” Nathan asked, his tone terrifyingly quiet. “The elevator requires a keycard. The stairwell door on this floor is kept deadbolted.”
Rachel squeezed Ellie tighter, tears spilling over her lashes. “The service staircase... in the back of the kitchen. The old dumbwaiter shaft has a maintenance door next to the pantry. The latch on the third-floor access panel has been broken for months. I reported it to the building manager in July, but no one ever came to fix it.”
She looked up at the ceiling, her body trembling. “Ellie... Ellie wanders when I'm scrubbing the lower offices. I thought she was staying in the staff breakroom with her coloring books. I had no idea she found the back stairs. I thought the third floor was just overflow storage!”
Nathan looked down at the little girl hiding her face in her mother's neck.
“Ellie,” Nathan said softly.
The toddler slowly turned her head, looking at him with wide, tear-filled hazel eyes.
“Did you come up here before today?” Nathan asked.
Ellie nodded faintly.
“Why?”
Ellie swallowed hard, reaching into her blue dress pocket again as if looking for comfort. “Because... because the lady in the picture said I could play with the blocks.”
Nathan felt as though the floor beneath his feet had suddenly dissolved into nothingness.
His breath stopped entirely.
“What lady?” Nathan whispered.
Ellie pointed her small, trembling hand past Nathan’s shoulder, pointing directly at the framed five-by-seven photograph sitting on the nightstand beside Sophie’s canopy bed.
It was a photograph of Claire, taken three months before the accident, holding a sleeping Sophie in her arms while sitting in the garden under the blooming cherry trees.
“The lady with the yellow flowers,” Ellie whispered in her quiet, baby voice. “She lives in the big book downstairs. But her room up here has the best blocks. She told me not to steal them... but I wanted to show Barnaby the star.”
Nathan stared at the toddler, his mind spinning into a dark, chaotic vortex.
Claire had been dead for twenty months.
Sophie had been dead for twenty-four.
Yet here was a child who had never seen Claire, pointing directly at her picture in a sealed, locked wing of an estate she should never have been able to enter.
Nathan walked slowly toward the nightstand. He picked up the photograph, his hand shaking so violently the glass frame rattled against his wedding ring.
He turned the frame over.
Tucked into the back lining of the leather picture frame—a spot he hadn't looked at since he placed the photo there two years ago—was a thin piece of folded yellow stationery.
It wasn't dust-covered.
The paper was crisp, fresh, and slightly creased at the edges, as though it had been pulled out and refolded recently.
Nathan pulled the folded paper from the back of the frame.
He unfolded it under the pale moonlight.
May you like
Written across the top in Claire’s elegant, sweeping cursive handwriting were four words that made Nathan Cole drop to his knees on the pink rug:
For when you find her.
