Chapter 3
Three days later, the family filled the main hall with flowers, champagne, and relatives who called the gathering small only because no reporters had been invited.
That morning, Mia had watched workers carry flower stands through the house. Each time the front doors opened, she checked that her yellow raincoat was still hanging in the mudroom.
Adrian found her there after breakfast with one hand on its sleeve.
“Why are you standing here?”
“If I have to go, I need my coat.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“Even if the party people don’t like me?”
“Even then.”
“Even if the second test says the first paper was wrong?”
He paused. Biology mattered to the legal questions, but the child in front of him was asking whether one uncertain document could send her back into the rain.
“You will have a safe place,” he said. “Whatever a paper says.”
“Here?”
Adrian would not promise more than he could defend, but this promise had already become his responsibility. “Here.”
Mia released the raincoat. “Then it can dry longer.”
Upstairs, the new clothes had been laid across the bed. There were too many. Adrian had told the store to send everything, and the store had taken him literally.
Mia touched a red dress, a blue sweater, and three pairs of shoes. “Are there other children coming?”
“They’re yours.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
She frowned at the abundance. “That is too many Mias.”
The house manager hid a smile. Adrian selected the yellow dress because it was soft and had no stiff collar. Mia selected the old rabbit because that required no decision.
Mia wore a pale yellow dress. Before leaving her room, she rubbed the skirt between two fingers.
“Do I have to give it back?”
“It belongs to you,” the house manager said.
“If I get it dirty, do I pay?”
“No.”
She nodded, memorizing a new rule. “Then I won’t pay.”
Adrian waited at the stairs holding a tiny hair clip. He tried once and caught nothing. He tried again and clipped the rabbit’s crooked ear.
Ethan paused below them. “That isn’t her hair.”
Mia looked down at the rabbit. “Maybe Bunny wants to be pretty too.”
On his third attempt, Adrian attached the clip to Mia. It was crooked but secure.
“Thank you, Dad.”
The word stopped him.
Mia’s cheeks turned pink. “I forgot. Can I owe you that one?”
“You can call me Dad.”
She smiled and hurried down the stairs before he could change his mind.
Lily met her in the hall, dressed in pink with a diamond headband. “You look pretty. You’ve never been to a party like this, have you?”
Mia shook her head.
“Then don’t touch things. The glasses are expensive. And don’t talk too much. These are adults.”
Mia placed both hands behind her back. “I’ll be quiet.”
Relatives watched her cross the room.
“Is she really Adrian’s?” one woman whispered.
“The test isn’t settled.”
“Claire took money and disappeared. Convenient that a child appears now.”
Mia heard Claire’s name and searched for Adrian. Vanessa stepped between them.
“He’s busy. You need to behave.”
“Mom said to stay close to my grown-up when there are many people.”
“Your mother taught you quite a lot.”
The lights dimmed.
The screen at the front of the hall should have shown the Bennett Foundation’s charity work. Instead, a bank-transfer image appeared.
Five million yuan.
Recipient: Claire Wynn.
Sending account: an account affiliated with the Bennett family foundation.
Whispers spread through the room.
Lily leaned near Mia. “So your mom really did take money.”
“She didn’t.”
“Her name is on the screen. Can’t you read?”
Mia knew only a few characters, but she knew her mother’s name. It hung above her, large enough for every adult to stare at.
She backed away, caught her heel in her skirt, and nearly fell. Adrian caught her shoulder.
Vanessa moved to the center of the room, looking distressed. “We shouldn’t have discussed this today. But we can’t pretend we haven’t seen it. Claire took family money before she left. Now this child appears. How can we know no one trained her to come here?”
“Mom’s bag had eight yuan and sixty cents,” Mia said desperately. “And a bus card. She didn’t have five million.”
Someone laughed under his breath.
“A child wouldn’t know.”
Lily whispered, “Your mom took money and sent you back for more.”
“No!”
Mia’s rabbit slipped. She grabbed too late, and it hit the floor. The loose seam across its stomach split.
“Bunny!”
She dropped to her knees and pressed at the stuffing. Something hard and black showed beneath it.
Ethan crossed the room at once. “Don’t touch it.”
Mia froze.
“Let me see,” he said more gently.
She looked at Adrian. When he nodded, she pulled out a battered voice recorder and placed it in Ethan’s hand.
“Mom sewed it inside. She said I couldn’t lose Bunny.”
Vanessa’s face went pale. “An old recorder proves nothing.”
Ethan pressed play.
Static filled the hall. Then Claire’s tired voice came through the small speaker.
“Mia, if anyone in the Bennett family says I took money, give the rabbit to Ethan Bennett.”
Mia stepped forward. “Mom?”
Claire coughed on the recording. “Remember. Don’t give it to anyone else. Only Ethan.”
For a moment, Mia forgot the guests. Her whole face opened toward the sound.
Ethan stopped the recording and placed the device in a clear evidence sleeve.
“Are you putting Mom in a bag?” Mia asked.
“No. I’m protecting the recorder.”
“Can she still talk?”
“Yes, after we make safe copies.”
“Be gentle.”
He sealed the sleeve with careful fingers.
Charles struck his cane against the floor. “Close the doors. No one leaves.”
Vanessa forced a smile. “These are relatives, not criminals.”
“Then they can stay and hear the truth.”
Ethan ordered the hall cameras preserved, the projection computer secured, and the recorder copied and examined. When a cousin protested that Ethan was treating them like suspects, Ethan said, “If this is an innocent mistake, registering your phone won’t injure you.”
Mia looked quickly at her own hands.
“He doesn’t mean you,” Adrian told her.
Her rabbit’s stomach still hung open. Adrian asked for a sewing kit, stared at the needle, and frowned.
“Can you sew?” Mia asked.
He did not answer.
“I recommend not letting the rabbit suffer a second injury,” Ethan said.
Mia immediately rescued it from Adrian. The house manager promised to mend it.
The promise did not calm Mia at once. She sat on the low stool with the rabbit pressed to her chest, one hand covering the open seam as if the stuffing might spill out with Claire’s voice.
“Will you have to cut Bunny again?”
“No,” Ethan said. “The recorder is out. The seam can be closed.”
“Mom used blue thread.”
The house manager found a spool in nearly the same shade and showed it to her. “This color?”
Mia compared it solemnly. “A little darker. But Bunny won’t mind if it is strong.”
Everything in the child’s life, Adrian realized, had been judged by whether it could last: food saved for later, a dress that might have to be returned, a toy repaired instead of replaced, a promise tested one morning at a time.
Across the hall, relatives who had been eager to discuss bloodlines now avoided looking at her. Charles ordered every chair returned to its place and had tea served again.
“Sit,” he told them. “You came to witness a recognition. You will also witness our correction.”
Marcus remained standing. “There has been no correction. There are allegations and an old recording.”
“There is a financial trail into companies connected to you,” Adrian said.
“Companies with hundreds of transactions. I didn’t personally authorize every payment.”
“Then the audit will show that.”
Marcus stared at him. “You’re willing to tear the family apart over a woman who vanished three years ago?”
Mia lifted her head. “Will finding out what happened make Mom wake up?”
No one moved.
Adrian could have offered a soft lie. Instead, he said, “No.”
She looked down. “Then find it anyway. Mom didn’t like people saying she was bad.”
“We will.”
For the first time, the investigation sounded less like damage control and more like a debt.
Charles called Mia to him. There was no child’s chair, so they found a low stool. Her new shoes had rubbed the backs of her heels red.
“Do they hurt?” he asked.
“No.” She answered too fast.
“Buy softer ones,” Charles told the manager.
“These are okay.”
“The Bennett family can afford two pairs.”
Mia considered him gravely. “Don’t borrow from loan sharks.”
One of the maids choked back a laugh.
Charles cleared his throat. “We won’t.”
Ethan’s initial search found that Claire had sent him a message the night before she left the Bennett home three years earlier. Carrier records showed it had been delivered at 11:42 p.m. He had never seen it. At 11:46, someone logged into his cloud account through the mansion’s internal network. At 11:47, Claire’s message disappeared.
“What did Mom send you?” Mia asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“But she tried to find you?”
“Yes.”
Mia rubbed the rabbit’s ear. “Then why didn’t you come?”
The question was quiet enough to make the room ashamed.
An assistant returned with the old device registration. The computer used to delete the message had last been registered in the second-floor west study. Three years ago, Vanessa had used that study while overseeing the family accounts.
“Anyone could enter that room,” Vanessa said.
“I didn’t say you deleted the message,” Ethan replied. “I said the device was registered to you.”
Marcus stepped in front of her. “Don’t make family business uglier than it needs to be.”
Ethan looked at him. “Was Claire family?”
Marcus had no answer.
Mia did. “Mom said she didn’t have a family. Did she ever come here?”
Charles remembered another rainy day. Claire, pregnant and pale, had stood outside his formal sitting room and said she had not come for money.
He had answered, The Bennett family cannot accept only your version.
Claire had rested a hand over her stomach. Then investigate. Just don’t investigate only me.
He never had.
