Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Nursery
The grandfather clock in the corner of the library ticked away the seconds with merciless precision.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Each rotation of the brass pendulum felt like a hammer blow against my chest. The vast, luxurious room that had once been my pride suddenly felt like a tomb.
— Mrs. Higgins, I managed to force out, the name tasting toxic on my tongue. — Where is she?
— She left at six o'clock, right after her shift ended, Annie replied, gently shifting Justin’s sleeping form to a more comfortable position. — She said she had personal errands to run in Stamford. But Mr. Morrison... that isn't the worst of it.
I gripped the edge of the mahogany desk so tightly my knuckles turned chalk-white.
— There's more?
Annie looked down at Jordan, who was now stirring, his small hand clutching her skirt tighter.
— When I came to work here six days ago, I was hired strictly as a daytime housekeeper. But on my second night, I stayed late to finish organizing the pantry. Around midnight, I heard scratching noises coming from the upper landing. I thought it might be a stray animal that got into the attic.
She paused, taking a slow, shaky breath.
— I walked up the stairs with a flashlight. The nursery door was locked from the outside, just like always. But inside that room, Justin was screaming bloody murder, and Jordan was pounding his fists against the wood so hard his knuckles were bleeding.
A sharp, jagged pain pierced my chest. My sons. My little boys.
— Did you unlock the door? I demanded.
— I didn't have the key code, Annie said, shaking her head. — Mrs. Higgins keeps the master digital key fob locked in her desk drawer. But I didn't need a key to hear what Mrs. Higgins was saying through the intercom speaker from her downstairs monitoring station.
My blood froze solid.
— What was she saying?
— She wasn't talking to the boys to calm them down, Annie whispered, her voice trembling with barely contained rage. — She was playing audio recordings of heavy machinery and screaming car crashes through the nursery speakers. Over and over again at maximum volume.
The library seemed to tilt sideways.
Car crashes. The exact sound that had torn our family apart fourteen months ago.
— Why? I roared, the pent-up fury of a broken man finally shattering my control. The sound echoed off the high wooden ceiling and rattled the crystal decanters on the sideboard. — Why would anyone do that?!
— Because traumatized, exhausted children don't throw tantrums during the day, Annie answered bluntly, her eyes flashing with fierce maternal protection. — A sleeping, terrified child is much easier to manage when you want to spend your entire shift scrolling on your phone in the staff lounge. Mrs. Higgins discovered that whenever she played those ambient sounds of the highway accident, the boys would panic for twenty minutes, huddle together in the corner of the room, and then pass out from sheer exhaustion by midnight. Every single night.
I couldn't breathe.
Oxygen refused to enter my lungs. The room darkened at the edges. For fourteen months, I had paid that woman an exorbitant salary—plus a generous quarterly bonus for "exceptional household management"—while she systematically tortured my motherless babies in the dark.
I took three stumbling steps toward the French doors leading out to the terrace, gasping for air as the full, crushing weight of my negligence settled over my shoulders.
Lauren had trusted me to protect them.
When she took her last breath inside that overturned SUV, her final thought hadn't been about her own pain; it had been about our babies. And I had traded their safety for convenience, outsourcing their childhood to the highest bidder while I chased numbers on a screen.
— Mr. Morrison?
Annie’s voice cut through the roaring tinnitus in my ears.
I turned around slowly, my vision blurred with hot, unbidden tears that I hadn't shed since the day they lowered Lauren’s casket into the frozen New York earth.
— Get your coat, Annie, I whispered, my voice cracking with lethal, cold fury.
She blinked, startled.
May you like
— Sir?
— We are going to Mrs. Higgins's cottage on the edge of the estate. And then, we are going to burn every single security lock, camera, and institutional protocol in this house to the ground.
