Read Chapter 10: The Runaway Brother

The paneled wall was still open behind us, the child-sized piano a dark silhouette against the faint glow of Julien’s phone flashlight. Bastien’s note trembled in my hand, the paper thin and yellowed, the ink faded but legible.

*I know what she is. I have to stop her before she takes another one. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry—I should have told you sooner. Tell Mama I love her.*

Julien hadn’t moved since we’d pried the panel loose. He stood frozen, the beam of his light fixed on the piano keys as if expecting them to depress on their own. The melody had stopped the moment we’d opened the compartment—an abrupt silence that felt louder than the music itself.

“Julien.” I folded the note carefully, tucking it into my jacket pocket. “This is dated 1999.”

He swallowed. I heard it click in his throat. “He wrote that the night he left.”

“The night he *vanished*.” I stepped closer, lowering my voice. The attic had gone cold, the September heat sealed out by decades of dust and shadow. “You told me he ran away. You told me he fled after seeing the ghost. But this isn’t a goodbye letter, Julien. This is a warning.”

He finally looked at me. His face was pale, his eyes rimmed red. I’d seen Julien Fontenot charm realtors, disarm hostile cousins, talk his way past parish clerks with a smile and a drawl. I’d never seen him look like a boy who’d lost his older brother twenty years ago and never told anyone.

“He called me that night.” Julien’s voice cracked. “The night he disappeared. I was seventeen. I was at a party on the bayou, drinking beer I’d stolen from my uncle’s cooler. My phone buzzed—one of those brick Nokias—and it was Bastien. I almost didn’t answer because I was embarrassed to be seen taking a call from my brother when I was trying to impress a girl.”

I didn’t push. I let him breathe.

“He was crying,” Julien continued, staring at the wall as if he could see through it, back through time. “Bastien never cried. He was the one who held me when our father died. He was the one who told me the Fontenots were stronger than the whispers. But that night he was sobbing, Elodie. Saying he was sorry. Saying he should have believed the stories.”

“Stories about Clarisse?”

“He said it wasn’t Clarisse.” Julien’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He said she was wearing Clarisse’s face but she wasn’t Clarisse. He said she told him the debt was coming due again, and he had to be the one to pay it. I told him he was drunk, that he needed to sleep it off. I told him I’d call him in the morning.”

He covered his face with his hands. The phone light swung wildly, casting monstrous shadows across the rafters.

“That morning, I called. And called. And called. The housekeeper found his car in the driveway, keys in the ignition. His wallet was on the kitchen counter. He was just—gone.” Julien lowered his hands. Tears tracked down his cheeks, catching the light. “I told everyone he’d run off to California. I made up a story about a girl he’d met in Jackson Square. Mama believed me because she wanted to. Étienne believed me because he was nine and I was his big brother and I *lied*.”

“Why?” The word came out softer than I intended.

“Because I knew.” Julien’s laugh was bitter, wet. “I knew if I told the truth—that Bastien said a ghost had come for him, that the house had *taken* him—they’d lock me up. Or worse, they’d start digging. And if they dug, they’d find what Bastien had found.”

“What did he find?”

Julien shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s the worst of it. I spent years trying to figure it out. I searched every inch of this house after the funeral—Mama’s funeral, I mean. I pulled up floorboards. I tore out wallpaper. I thought maybe there was a letter, a journal, something he’d left for me.” He gestured at the open panel. “I never found this. All these years, and I never thought to look behind the wall.”

“He was in the attic,” I said slowly. “Bastien was up here, and he found this room. He found the piano.” I looked at the child-sized instrument, its keys yellowed, its frame carved with roses that may have once been white. “And he found something else.”

The music box sat on the piano bench, its brass lid open. I’d noticed it when we first broke through, but in the chaos of finding the note, I hadn’t examined it. I reached for it now, carefully, my fingers brushing the cool metal.

“Careful,” Julien said.

I lifted the music box. It was heavier than it looked, inlaid with mother-of-pearl that had cracked with age. Inside, a tiny drum rotated beneath a comb of metal teeth. The cylinder was etched with what looked like a name—*M.L.*—and a date: *1859*.

“Marie Leveau,” I breathed.

Julien came to stand beside me, wiping his face with his sleeve. “The woman from the deed.”

“The woman from the curse.” I turned the cylinder, watching the pins catch the light. “Odette said the music is the curse. The melody plays every night because Marie Leveau vowed the house would never know silence until the debt was acknowledged.” I looked up at him. “What if the music isn’t just a curse? What if it’s a *recording*? What if it’s playing something that happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“We found the photograph of Marie Leveau in the locket, hidden in the study,” I said, pacing now, the pieces clicking together in my mind like tumblers in a lock. “Why would Émile Fontenot keep a photo of the woman he supposedly wronged? Why would he hide it behind a secret panel? And then we find this room—a child’s room, sealed away—with a music box engraved with her initials, and your brother’s warning about the debt coming due again.”

Julien’s eyes widened. “You think Bastien figured out the connection between Émile and Marie Leveau.”

“I think Bastien figured out a lot more than that.” I set the music box down carefully. “And I think whatever he found underneath that oak tree was what got him taken.”

The silence stretched between us. In the distance, I heard the first notes of the melody beginning again—soft, tentative, as if the house were warming up. The music had never stopped for long. It was coming from somewhere else now, somewhere lower. The main floor.

“The sun’s down,” Julien said quietly. “We missed our window.”

I looked at the attic window. The sky beyond was a bruised purple, the last light bleeding out over the treeline. We’d been so focused on the compartment that we’d lost track of the time.

“We’ll find another window,” I said. “Tomorrow. The next day. However long it takes.”

Julien shook his head. “It has to be done at sunset. Odette said so.”

“Odette said a lot of things.” I walked to the panel and began pulling it closed, hiding the child’s piano and the music box and Bastien’s note back into the dark. “She also said I needed protection.” I touched the gris-gris bag in my pocket, the weight of it comforting. “And she said the house would never know silence until the debt is acknowledged. So we acknowledge it.”

“Elodie—” Julien started.

“I’m not selling this house.”

He stared at me. The words hung in the air, heavy and final. I hadn’t known I was going to say them until they were out, but once they were, I felt something settle in my chest. A decision that had been building since the moment I’d found the unrecorded deed, since I’d seen Marie Leveau’s scarred face in that locket, since I’d read Bastien’s last words.

“Your client,” Julien said carefully. “Your firm. This was supposed to be a simple estate settlement.”

“This stopped being simple the moment I heard that piano,” I said. “Your brother went missing twenty years ago, and no one looked for him because everyone was too afraid of the scandal. That’s not going to happen anymore.” I met his eyes. “Bastien said he was sorry for not believing the stories. I believe him. And I believe he’s still out there somewhere—or at least, the truth about what happened to him is.”

Julien was quiet for so long I thought I’d overstepped. I was his attorney, technically. I wasn’t supposed to be making personal crusades out of his family tragedy.

“You could lose your license,” he finally said. “If you delay the sale indefinitely, if your firm finds out you’re refusing to close on a multi-million dollar property because of a ghost story and a music box—”

“Then I lose my license.” I shrugged. “I’ll open a small practice somewhere. Draw up wills for elderly ladies who want to leave their houses to their cats.”

He laughed—a real laugh, surprising us both. “I’d hire you.”

“I’d take the case.” I smiled. “For a reasonable fee.”

The melody from downstairs grew louder, filtering up through the floorboards, curling into the attic like smoke. It was the same tune, the same haunting cadence, but tonight it sounded different to my ears. Less like a warning. More like a call.

“We’ll go back to Odette,” I said. “Tell her what we found. See if she knows anything about the oak tree and a child—Bastien’s note mentioned a child. And we’ll keep looking.”

Julien nodded slowly. “And the sale?”

“Postponed indefinitely,” I said. “Pending further investigation.”

We descended the attic stairs together, the music following us down. In the foyer, the grandfather clock said 8:47. Outside, the moon was rising over the live oaks, casting silver shadows across the garden.

I paused at the front door and looked back at the mansion. It loomed in the darkness, patient and Knowing. The piano played on.

“Julien,” I said. “What was Bastien doing up there? In the attic, before he found the room?”

Julien’s hand rested on the doorframe. He looked tired, older than he had this morning, the grief of twenty years finally allowed to surface. “Mama always said she heard footsteps up there when she was a girl. She thought it was the ghost of a child. Clarisse and Émile had a daughter who died young—that’s what the stories say. She fell down the stairs. Or was locked away. Depending on who you believe.”

I looked back at the attic window. In its dark pane, I thought I saw a flicker—a small pale face, watching. But when I blinked, it was gone.

“A child,” I said. “The music is for the child.”