CHAPTER 1 — The Song Behind the Nursery Door
CHAPTER 1 — The Song Behind the Nursery Door
Alexander Whitmore had spent twenty years building an empire powerful enough to make senators return his calls and competitors fear his name.
But nothing had prepared him for what he saw inside his sons’ nursery.
His six-year-old twins, Noah and Nicholas, were sitting on the carpet with their arms wrapped tightly around Clara Bennett, the new maid.
Clara wore the plain beige uniform selected by the household manager. Her brown hair was tied into a low bun, and her hands rested protectively on the boys’ backs.
Across the room, Alexander’s wife, Vanessa, stood rigid beside the window.
Her expression was cold enough to freeze the entire mansion.
“She is just a maid,” Vanessa said sharply.
Noah tightened his grip around Clara’s waist.
“No,” he whispered. “She’s more like Mommy.”
Alexander stopped breathing.
Vanessa’s face changed.
Only for a second.
But Alexander saw it.
Fear.
Nicholas looked up at his father with wet blue eyes.
“She sings us the same song.”
“What song?” Alexander asked.
Before either boy could answer, the antique music box beside the bed began playing.
The melody was soft.
Delicate.
Almost painfully familiar.
Alexander stared at the tiny wooden box as memories tore through him.
A hospital room.
Rain against a window.
A woman’s trembling voice singing to a newborn child.
But that had happened years before the twins were born.
And the woman who had sung that melody was dead.
Alexander slowly turned toward Clara.
“Where did you learn that song?”
Clara’s lips parted.
Vanessa stepped forward.
“She probably heard it from the children.”
“No,” Noah insisted. “We never knew it before she came.”
The room fell silent again.
Clara looked at the twins, then at Alexander.
“My mother taught it to me,” she said quietly.
Alexander’s pulse quickened.
“What was your mother’s name?”
Clara hesitated.
“Eleanor Bennett.”
The music box stopped.
Alexander’s face went pale.
Because Eleanor Bennett was the name of the woman he had been told died seven years ago.
May you like
The woman he had once loved.
And the mother of his first child.
