Read Chapter 19: The Ledger's Last Entry

The night air pressed cold against Evelyn’s cheeks as she slipped back into the house through the servant’s entrance, her breath shallow, her mind still ringing with Annabel’s confession. The crypt had smelled of damp stone and decay, and Annabel’s voice—thin as parchment—had spoken of mothers who wished their children dead. Evelyn had held her hand in the dark and promised nothing she could not keep. Now she moved through the sleeping corridors with the ledger pressed against her ribs, her fingers trembling not from cold but from the weight of what she carried.

She reached her room and barred the door. The candle on her writing desk had burned low, its flame casting long shadows across the walls. She set the ledger down and stood over it a moment, staring at the worn leather cover, the brass clasp that had yielded so easily to her insistent fingers. She had taken it from the east wing hours ago, before her confrontation with Lord Blackwood, before the crypt, before everything had shifted beneath her feet like the boggy ground beyond the estate’s gardens.

The ledger had belonged to Miss Reeves.

Evelyn had assumed it was a record of household accounts—the meticulous bookkeeping of a governess who had served the Blackwood family for over a decade. But when she opened it now, the pages revealed something else entirely: observations, dates, names, all written in a small, precise hand that had clearly been meant for no other eyes.

She turned the pages slowly. Early entries spoke of Lady Beatrice’s rages, of the old woman’s obsession with the shape of Annabel’s eyes, the color of her hair, the set of her jaw. Margaret, the children’s mother, had been devoted, but Lady Beatrice had never accepted the girl as her son’s true child. Evelyn read an entry from eight years past, describing a winter evening when Lady Beatrice had attempted to send young Annabel to a distant aunt under the pretense of “improving her constitution.” Miss Reeves had intervened, convincing Lord Blackwood to keep his daughter at home.

The entries grew darker. An attempt on Annabel’s life when she was just three years old—a fall down the main staircase that had been written off as childish clumsiness. Miss Reeves had noted the bruises on the child’s wrists, the way Lady Beatrice had watched from the gallery above as the servants scrambled to catch the screaming girl.

Evelyn’s stomach turned. She kept reading.

The entries grew more frequent in the months before Annabel’s disappearance. Lady Beatrice had grown worse, more erratic, her hatred of the child a fixed and burning thing. Miss Reeves had written of her fears for the girl’s safety, of late-night vigils outside Annabel’s door, of letters written to contacts who might take the girl in if it came to that.

Then, the final entry. Evelyn recognized the date—the day Miss Reeves had vanished. The handwriting was rushed, the ink smudged as if the writer’s hand had been shaking.

*I have found Annabel, and will depart with her to a new life. The Blackwoods must never know.*

Evelyn read it three times, the words not quite settling into sense. She had assumed Miss Reeves had been silenced by Lady Beatrice’s men, her disappearance a murder concealed by the family’s influence. But this entry suggested something else: that Miss Reeves had planned to leave, that she had intended to take Annabel with her, that the two of them had been meant to escape together.

But Annabel had told Evelyn a different story.

In the crypt, shivering beneath her threadbare cloak, Annabel had spoken of Mr. Thorne as her savior, of Miss Reeves as her guardian who had vanished before their plans could be realized. She had claimed not to know where Miss Reeves had gone or why she had failed to appear on the night they were meant to flee together.

Evelyn had believed her. She had held the girl’s cold fingers and believed every word.

Now she stared at the ledger’s final entry and felt the ground shift beneath her once more.

She closed the ledger and pressed her palm against its cover, as if she could feel through the leather the truth of what had happened. Miss Reeves had written that she had found Annabel. She had written that they would depart together. There was no mention of Mr. Thorne in this final note, no mention of the elaborate plan Annabel had described in the crypt.

Evelyn thought of Annabel’s pale face, the hollows of her cheeks, the way her voice had cracked when she spoke of her mother. She had seemed so fragile, so pitiful, a girl wronged by her own blood. And yet.

She thought of Miss Reeves, vanished without trace. Of the letters that had been supposed to survive somewhere, proof of Lady Beatrice’s crimes. Of Annabel’s confusion when Evelyn had asked where those letters might be hidden.

*I do not know,* Annabel had said. *She never told me.*

But if Miss Reeves had written that she had found Annabel—if the two of them had been meant to leave together—then why had Miss Reeves gone alone? Why had she vanished without her charge?

Unless she had not vanished alone.

Evelyn’s hand went cold against the ledger. She had asked herself, in the long hours since the crypt, whether Annabel might have silenced Miss Reeves to prevent her mother’s discovery. The thought had come to her unbidden, an ugly suspicion she had tried to bury. But now the ledger gave it new weight. If Miss Reeves had been about to expose Lady Beatrice’s crimes, and if Annabel feared that exposure would bring ruin upon her family—or upon herself, for she had faked her own death—then there was a motive there, dark and plausible.

She looked at the date again. The entry had been written the day Miss Reeves vanished. That night, Annabel had also disappeared, supposedly to her own staged death in the lake.

Two disappearances on the same night. Two women meant to leave together, only one of them reaching the crypt.

Evelyn set the ledger down and pressed her fingers to her temples. Her head ached with the weight of possibilities.

She needed to speak to Annabel again. She needed to ask her directly what had happened between her and Miss Reeves on that final night. But the thought of returning to the crypt, of looking into those eyes and voicing her suspicion—it felt like a betrayal of the one person who had placed her trust in Evelyn’s hands.

And yet. The ledger lay open before her, its final entry an accusation that would not be silenced.

Evelyn blew out the candle and sat in the dark, the words burning in her mind. She had come to Blackwood to find Annabel. She had found her. But the girl she had rescued was not the girl she had imagined, and the truth she sought seemed to recede further into shadow with every step she took toward it.