Chapter 7: The Woman at the Gate
Lorraine stood beside the back gate when Elena and Arthur emerged.
She held a small metal watering can, although there were no plants near her feet.
“I wondered why the workshop lights were on,” she said.
Arthur folded his arms.
“It’s daylight, Lorraine.”
Lorraine ignored him and addressed Elena.
“You should have listened when I told you this place wasn’t safe.”
“You threw stones at my kitchen,” Elena replied.
“You cannot prove that.”
“I can tell the police what I saw and heard.”
Lorraine’s gaze dropped to Elena’s exposed forearm.
“You don’t understand what that symbol means.”
“Then explain it.”
Lorraine’s mouth tightened.
“Ask Arthur why the old theater closed.”
Arthur took a step forward.
“Leave her alone.”
Elena looked between them.
“What theater?”
Lorraine smiled for the first time that afternoon.
“That’s the question you should have asked before buying the house.”
She set the watering can on the ground and walked away.
Arthur watched her go without speaking.
Elena waited until Lorraine reached the sidewalk.
“Arthur, what did she mean?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Mrs. Hartwell helped run a youth theater in town twenty years ago.”
“What happened to it?”
“It shut down after a disastrous opening night.”
“Was there a fire?”
Arthur looked at Elena’s tattoo again.
“No,” he said.
“There wasn’t a fire.”
“Then what happened?”
Arthur’s voice dropped.
“A child disappeared for six hours, and half the town decided somebody had to be blamed.”
Chapter 8: Six Hours
Elena felt an immediate urge to connect the missing child to the mark on her arm.
She resisted it because coincidence was not proof.
Arthur explained that the town’s youth theater had operated from a converted warehouse called the Lantern Room.
On opening night, a ten-year-old boy named Peter Vale had vanished during a rehearsal break.
The police searched the warehouse, nearby alleys, and the riverfront.
Peter was found the next morning at a bus station, frightened but unharmed.
He told the adults that he had walked out because somebody said his father was waiting outside.
No one admitted giving him that message.
The theater closed within a month.
Elena asked why Mrs. Hartwell had been blamed.
Arthur shook his head.
“She was the stage manager,
so everyone expected her to know where every child was.”
“And Lorraine?”
“Lorraine ran the volunteer sign-in table.”
Elena considered the workshop’s changed door and the marks on its floor.
“What happened to Peter afterward?”
“His family moved away.”
“Did he ever explain who spoke to him?”
“Not that I heard.”
Arthur stood beside the workshop door, his face drawn with an old discomfort.
“You should understand something about Lorraine,” he said.
“She has spent twenty years insisting that night happened one particular way.”
Elena looked at the broken planter on her porch.
“And now she thinks my tattoo threatens that story.”
“Maybe,” Arthur said.
“But I don’t know why.”
Elena went inside and retrieved a notebook from her moving boxes.
She wrote down the names Peter Vale, Mrs. Hartwell, and Lantern Room.
Then she drew the three lines and open circle beside them.
She had never been to the Lantern Room, and she had designed her tattoo thousands of miles away.
Whatever Lorraine recognized was not the explanation Elena expected.
Her phone buzzed before she could close the notebook.
The message came from an unfamiliar number.
“If you want to know why she fears the mark, look at the people who were told not to use the front door.”
Elena read the sentence twice.
Outside, the workshop door moved gently in the evening wind.
