PART 2: The Rooms That Kept a Secret .

Mrs. Harper did not move.

For several seconds, the only sound in the hallway was the faint whisper of air moving through the ventilation grate.

The towels lay scattered around her shoes.

Vincent looked from her to the vent.

“Margaret?”

It was the first time I had heard him use her first name.

Mrs. Harper bent slowly and gathered the towels, though her hands were trembling enough that one of them slipped free again.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Not to Vincent.

Not to me.

She was looking toward the boys’ rooms.

Vincent’s voice changed. The hard edge I had heard in his office disappeared.

“What is it?”

Mrs. Harper closed her eyes.

“There was a problem with the air system.”

“When?”

“Last year.”

The answer seemed to surprise Vincent more than anger him.

He stared at her.

“What kind of problem?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“You never told me.”

“I thought it had been fixed.”

There was something important in the way she said it.

Not defensive.

Ashamed.

I crouched near the grate again.

The sweet smell was still there. It was subtle enough that someone living in the house might have stopped noticing it long ago.

“Who fixed it?” I asked.

Mrs. Harper hesitated.

“A company Dr. Blake recommended.”

Vincent’s expression became unreadable.

I stood.

“Do the boys spend most of their time in these rooms?”

Mrs. Harper nodded.

“They’ve been too tired for school for months. Their tutors come here. They rest here. They play here.”

“So even when they’re not sleeping, they’re breathing this air.”

Vincent looked toward the bedroom doors.

A father noticing a possibility is different from a man discovering a fact.

Hope can frighten people as much as bad news when they have been disappointed often enough.

“Claire,” he said carefully, “are you saying the ventilation is making them sick?”

“No.”

The word came quickly.

I wanted to be certain he heard it.

“I’m saying there’s something unusual about the air, and we shouldn’t ignore it.”

Mrs. Harper finally looked at me.

Her face was pale.

“What do we do?”

“We don’t frighten Lucas and Leo.”

That mattered most.

Vincent nodded immediately.

“And we move them somewhere else tonight.”

“There are guest rooms in the east wing,” Mrs. Harper said.

“Good. Somewhere that uses a different ventilation branch, if possible.”

Vincent was already reaching for his phone.

I lifted a hand.

“Before you bring twenty people into this house, can we do this quietly?”

He looked at me.

I had known him for less than an hour, and telling Vincent Moretti what not to do probably seemed unwise to everyone else in the mansion.

But he lowered the phone.

“Why?”

“Because if we change everything at once, we lose information.”

He glanced toward the vent.

“What information?”

“How the boys feel after one night somewhere else.”

His gaze remained on me.

Then he put the phone away.

“All right.”

Mrs. Harper exhaled.

“I’ll prepare the rooms.”

“No scented cleaners,” I said. “No air fresheners. No new bedding washed in perfume. Nothing we don’t need.”

She nodded.

Then she started down the hallway.

“Mrs. Harper?”

She stopped.

I waited until she turned.

“You’re going to have to tell us everything you remember about the ventilation work.”

Her fingers tightened around the folded towels.

“I will.”

This time, I believed her.

Lucas and Leo were sitting on the floor when I entered their room.

For identical twins, they had developed very different ways of being ill.

Lucas spoke whenever he had enough energy.

Leo conserved words as though they were expensive.

They were building a wooden railway around the legs of a small table. Or rather, Lucas was building while Leo leaned against the bed and offered quiet instructions.

“That bridge goes there,” Leo said.

Lucas frowned.

“It can’t.”

“It can.”

“It’ll fall.”

Leo looked at me.

“Tell him.”

“I’ve only just arrived,” I said. “I’m not getting involved in railway politics.”

Lucas laughed.

The sound was thin, but it was real.

Vincent stood in the doorway.

His entire posture changed when he looked at them.

The man downstairs had carried himself like someone accustomed to controlling every room he entered.

Here, he seemed careful not to take up too much space.

“Boys,” he said.

Lucas looked up.

“Are we in trouble?”

“No.”

“Then why are you using that voice?”

Vincent blinked.

I turned away before he caught me smiling.

“What voice?”

“Your serious father voice.”

“I have a serious father voice?”

“You have three voices,” Lucas said. “Serious father, telephone, and telling people to leave.”

Leo added, “Four.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow.

“What’s the fourth?”

“When you don’t know something.”

That silenced him.

Children notice far more than adults like to believe.

Vincent stepped into the room.

“And what does that voice sound like?”

Leo shrugged.

“Quiet.”

Something passed across Vincent’s face.

Then he sat on the edge of the bed.

“We’re going to try an experiment tonight.”

Lucas immediately brightened.

“With chemicals?”

“No chemicals.”

“Electricity?”

“No.”

“Explosions?”

“Absolutely not.”

Lucas sighed.

“Then people use the word experiment too easily.”

I knelt beside the railway.

“The experiment is sleeping in different rooms.”

The twins exchanged a look.

“Why?” Leo asked.

“Because I noticed something about the air in here.”

Lucas sniffed dramatically.

“Smells normal.”

“That’s because you’ve been around it every day.”

Leo studied me.

“Is the room sick?”

“No.”

I chose my words carefully.

“Rooms can have problems just like houses can. A window that doesn’t close properly. A pipe that leaks. Air that doesn’t circulate the way it should. We’re checking whether there’s something here that needs fixing.”

“Will we still sleep together?” Lucas asked.

Vincent answered before I could.

“The guest rooms connect.”

Lucas considered this.

“Can we move the railway?”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

Vincent looked at the complicated wooden tracks stretching across half the floor.

For a moment, I saw genuine alarm.

“I believe,” he said, “that would require an engineering team.”

Lucas grinned.

“I can supervise.”

That evening, six adults moved a wooden railway into the east wing.

No one complained.

Dinner was served in a smaller dining room than I expected.

The main dining room, Mrs. Harper explained, had not been used regularly since Isabella died.

“This room feels less formal,” she said.

That seemed to be the explanation she had used for years.

But I suspected there was another.

Lucas and Leo sat beside each other. Vincent sat across from them.

I watched quietly.

The boys picked at their food.

Lucas ate three bites of pasta and stopped.

Leo drank water but barely touched anything else.

“Does food make you feel sick?” I asked.

Lucas shook his head.

“Just tired.”

“Tired from eating?”

“Sometimes chewing feels like homework.”

Vincent looked down at his plate.

That sentence hurt him.

I could see it.

Leo must have noticed too, because he reached across the table and stole one of his father’s olives.

Vincent looked at him.

“I saw that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I was looking directly at you.”

Leo ate the olive.

“Then you should get your eyes checked.”

Vincent smiled.

It was brief.

But it transformed him.

The fearsome Vincent Moretti apparently had no defense against seven-year-old logic.

After dinner, I helped the boys settle into the east wing.

Lucas asked twelve questions about why I had become a caregiver.

Leo asked one.

“Do people leave?”

I was arranging books on a nightstand.

I stopped.

“What do you mean?”

“People who work here.”

Lucas was already half asleep in the other bed.

Leo was watching me.

“Some leave,” I said.

“Doctors leave.”

“Yes.”

“Nurses leave.”

“Sometimes.”

“Tutors leave.”

I sat beside his bed.

“That happens.”

“You will too.”

It was not an accusation.

That made it worse.

Children who expect disappointment often speak about it like weather.

Eventually rain comes.

Eventually people leave.

“I probably won’t work here forever,” I said.

He looked down at the blanket.

“But I won’t disappear without saying goodbye.”

His eyes lifted.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

He thought about that.

Then he nodded once.

Across the room, Lucas mumbled sleepily.

“You have to promise me too.”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I hear important things.”

I smiled.

“Then I promise you too.”

Vincent was standing outside the doorway.

I had not heard him arrive.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then he quietly closed the door halfway.

“They shouldn’t have learned to ask people that,” he said.

His voice was low.

“They’ve had a lot of doctors.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

I looked at him.

He stared into the room.

“After Isabella died, the house changed. People didn’t know what to say to me. They certainly didn’t know what to say to two three-year-old boys who kept asking when their mother was coming home.”

He rubbed a hand over his face.

“Some staff left. Some relatives stopped visiting because they said it was too difficult.”

“For whom?”

His eyes met mine.

“Exactly.”

I leaned against the wall.

“What was she like?”

For several seconds, I thought he would refuse to answer.

Instead, a tired smile appeared.

“Isabella?”

“Yes.”

“She opened windows in winter.”

I laughed softly.

“That’s very specific.”

“She said houses needed fresh air even when people disagreed.”

His smile faded into something gentler.

“She sang terribly. She burned toast constantly. She bought books faster than she could read them. And every spring she decided she was going to grow tomatoes.”

“Was she successful?”

“Never.”

“Not once?”

“Not a single edible tomato.”

I smiled.

He looked toward his sons.

“They remember almost none of it.”

“They remember how she made them feel.”

He was quiet.

“That’s what people say.”

“Because it’s usually true.”

He looked at me.