“Fletcher. Cora Fletcher.” I’d signed on for a lower staff position with the most nondescript name I could conjure at a moment’s notice, neatly tucking away my true identity. No sense in announcing who I was, if I meant to investigate matters.

And investigate I would.

I’d meant what I told Richard when I’d rejected the idea of coming here, but the rudder of my thoughts had swung the other direction when an unexpected response from Hurstwell arrived at the house:

There seems to be some error. I’m sorry to inform you that we’ve no record of a patient by that name at this establishment, and never have. Perhaps you have the wrong asylum and might inquire at others.

Yet it was Hurstwell that had received Father’s payments every month for years. I checked the records twice. And the sketch—that face—I knew that face. But only under the oddest circumstances. In a recurring dream that evaporated by morning, complete with a haunting melody heard only by me.

Every time I saw that shy smile in the sketch, in my memory, something weakened in my core, and I couldn’t erase the image from my every waking thought. Come find me, she seemed to be saying. Don’t let me be forgotten. I’d requested the solicitor to look into it at first, but all he’d done was report a likely paperwork error and request that they stop the payments. I’d pushed him to find more, and he’d offered me the card of a private investigator and the oddest look of concern for my sanity.

Yet when I studied that inked portrait, that shy little smile full of warmth . . . well, I knew the bumbling man in the ill-fitting suit simply hadn’t been clever enough to get to the truth. He never would. And I needed the truth.

That night I’d dreamed of her again, so clearly and memorably. I watched her draw her song from the keys, that lilting tune stretching from major to minor, wrapping itself around my senses. It intoxicated. Lingered. Then she’d looked right at me.

When I’d woken the following morning and said, “Make today count,” I knew who I would help, who needed me the most. The only one I had the ability to rescue at the moment, the one who had no one but me to help her.

And the one who absolutely would not leave my mind. All my pressurized zeal turned her direction, and I was eager to rescue. To pull her from whatever darkness had swallowed her.