Read Chapter 10: A Child Missing

The route to the cargo hold was a descent into the ship’s iron guts. Each ladder they climbed down smelled more strongly of oil and brine, the polished brass of the upper decks giving way to riveted steel slick with condensation. Tom led, his shoulders broad in the dim electric light, and Élodie followed, her skirts gathered in one fist, the other hand pressed to the cold rail.

“You’re certain it was this hatch?” she whispered as they reached a narrow passage lined with crates.

“Marie’s description matched the starboard hold. She said the man wore a steward’s jacket, but his boots were wrong—too fine.” He paused at a bolted door and pressed his ear against it. “The collapsible was a lie. She was too scared to give them the real location, so she sent them here to buy time.”

“And we’re gambling that they believed her.”

“We’re gambling that they’re not already here.”

Tom worked the locking wheel with his forearms, the metal groaning. The door swung open into a cavernous space stacked with trunks, barrels, and a motorcar strapped to the deck like a caged beast. A single naked bulb swung overhead, casting long shadows that shifted as the ship rolled.

Then Élodie heard it. A small, hiccupping sob.

She moved before Tom could stop her, ducking around a pyramid of wooden crates. In the corner, wedged behind a coil of rope, a boy of perhaps six sat with his knees drawn to his chest. His face was tear-streaked, his blond hair plastered to his forehead, and he clutched a toy tin soldier in one grubby fist.

“Louis?” Élodie dropped to her knees, keeping her voice soft. “Louis, we’re friends of Marie.”

The boy looked up, eyes wide and rimmed with red. “Where is she?” His voice cracked. “She said she’d come back. She said—she said to count to one hundred and stay quiet.”

Tom crouched behind Élodie, keeping his bulk low. “How long have you been counting?”

“I got to two hundred.” The toy soldier rattled in his trembling hand. “And then I started over.”

Élodie reached out slowly, palm up. “Louis, my name is Élodie. This is Tom. We’re going to take you somewhere safe. Can you walk?”

He nodded but didn’t move. His gaze flicked past her, scanning the darkness beyond them. “The man came down. He looked in the crates. He said if I screamed he’d take my ears to my mam. But she’s not my mam, is she?”

The words hit Élodie in the chest. “Marie told us. She’s not your real sister.”

Louis shook his head. “Marie is my sister. But the man in the steward’s coat—he said my father sent him, and that Marie was lying, that she stole me from a rich house.” His bottom lip quivered. “Is that true? Did Marie steal me?”

Tom’s voice was low and steady. “What do you think, Louis? Does Marie hurt you?”

“No.” The answer came fast, fierce. “She’s the only one who ever gave me soup when I was cold.”

Élodie took the boy’s free hand. “Then we trust Marie. And Marie trusted us to find you.”

Behind them, the ship’s horn gave a low, mournful blast, and Louis flinched. Tom scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “We need to move. If the man already searched this hold, he’ll be back with his partner.”

But as Élodie rose, tugging Louis gently to his feet, she noticed something glinting on the coil of rope where the boy had been sitting. A circle of gold, small and thin. A wedding ring.

“Louis,” she said carefully, “did Marie give you anything? Before she left?”

He picked up the ring with his free hand, offering it like a token. “She put it on the rope. Said if I got scared, I could hold it and think of her. She said she’d be back before it got cold.”

Élodie took the ring. Inside the band, an engraving: *M.R.—Forever.* Marie’s initials. A woman who had told them her husband was dead, who wore no band on her finger the first time Élodie had seen her in steerage.

Tom was already scanning the floor near Louis’s hiding spot. He came up holding a folded sheet of paper, crisp and white—officer’s stationery. “This was tucked under the rope.”

He unfolded it. Élodie read over his shoulder, the words stark in pencil:

*To the Captain of the RMS Titanic.*

*I am Marie Reilly. I have committed a fraud upon this ship. The child Louis is not my brother. I took him from his true family to protect him from a man who claims to be his father. That man is aboard. He will kill the boy before we reach Philadelphia rather than lose his claim. I have failed. Whatever becomes of me, do not return Louis to my keeping. His grandfather is William Hargrave of Chestnut Hill. Find him.*

*I am sorry I could not be braver.*

*M.R.*

The ship rolled, and the bulb swung, haloing Tom’s face as he looked from the note to Louis. “Where did she go?”

Louis pointed past the motorcar, toward a small iron ladder that led farther down. “Down. She went down after the man left. She said she had to fix him so he couldn’t hurt me.”

Élodie’s blood went cold. “She went after him. Alone.”

Tom crushed the note in his fist. “If she confronts him, he’ll kill her. And if she’s carrying this—” He stopped. The ring. The note addressed to the captain. “She’s not coming back. She’s covering her tracks. She plans for only one of them to walk away.”

Louis began to cry, silently, tears sliding down his cheeks. “She told me to count.”

Élodie crouched down to his level and took both his hands, the ring still caught between her fingers. “Louis, I need you to be brave for one more count. Tom and I are going to go get Marie, and you’re going to come with us. But we have to be quiet as mice. Can you do that?”

He sniffed, nodded.

Tom shook his head. “We can’t take a child down there. If they’re waiting—”

“And if we leave him, they’ll find him,” Élodie cut in. “The man knows this hold. He’ll come back with his woman and finish what they started.” She looked at the note, at the confession signed so cleanly. “Marie didn’t plan to survive tonight. She wrote her goodbyes. If we’re the only ones who know the truth about that ring, we’re the only ones who can prove Louis belongs with his grandfather—not with her, not with the man.”

Tom’s jaw tightened. Then he bent and scooped Louis into his arms, the boy’s hand locking around his neck. “Quiet as mice, son. And if you see a red ribbon, you tell me. Marie used to wear one when she was little—just in case she’s left us a trail.”

Louis’s eyes widened. “She gave me her ribbon. Before the man came. She tied it to my button so I wouldn’t be lost.”

He pulled it from his coat pocket—a scrap of faded crimson, frayed at the edges.

Tom and Élodie exchanged a look. The note said Marie had set her plan in motion. The ribbon said she had prepared a trail for them all along.

And no one had told Tom about the ribbon. No one had told him it meant anything. But the woman who left the first note—the French-speaking observer—had known.

Élodie turned to the ladder. Below them, the ship’s lower decks hummed with engines, with heat, with the dark work of coal and fire.

“Then we follow the trail she laid,” she said. “And we trust that Marie Reilly was braver than she wrote.”