My name is L. Delphinium, and I am the director of the Larkspur Academy for the Performing Arts in New York State. I work with several professional scouts around the world and when one of them attended your son’s recent recital at the Oberlin campus in Ohio, she was overcome by the power of his performance. We would love it if Marcus came to study with us …

Lou read the email over and over, trying to make sense of it. Could this be the answer to where Marcus was? Did Aunt Paige not remember receiving the email? Maybe Marcus had gotten it directly and had never showed it to her. But Marcus didn’t seem like the type to just take off for a music camp in New York without his parents being on board.

Downstairs, horror dawned on Aunt Paige’s face as she scanned the page. “Where did you get this?”

Lou worried that she’d made a mistake. “It was stuck in a book by Marcus’s bed.”

Aunt Paige showed the printout to Lou’s mother, who gasped, “Call the detective!”

“This has got to be some sort of joke,” Aunt Paige went on, as if talking to herself. “Larkspur Academy?”

“Larkspur. You don’t think …” Mom trailed off before glancing at Lou and then pulling her sister away into the kitchen. The two women whispered, and Lou crept to the doorway to catch what they were saying.

She could only hear snippets. “That old mansion burned down years ago, long before Mom and Dad left Greencliffe. Even before Shane went missing …”

Lou knew that Shane had been Mom and Aunt Paige’s brother, and that he’d died when he was young, but no one ever talked about him. At least not around her. Lou leaned closer.

“Maybe the Caldwell family rebuilt it.”

“I don’t think any of them survived the fire.”

“Still, it doesn’t answer why Marcus would have hidden the email from me …”

Her mother gasped, and Lou jolted, covering her mouth to keep from squeaking. “You don’t think this has anything to do with our old dollhouse, do you?”

“The dollhouse?”

“Yes! Gramma was always so proud that it came from Larkspur House …”

Lou clutched at the door frame, her head spinning. The dollhouse had come from a place called Larkspur? Her mother caught a glimpse of her. “Louise … honey, why don’t you go sit with your cousins.”

Aunt Paige was making a call. “Yes, Detective Dosteler? This is Paige Geller … thank you. Listen, my niece found some information that I think you need to see … Now? Yes, I can bring it to the station right away.”

Lou sat in front of the television as the sun sank past the horizon. She couldn’t fathom Marcus spending another night without his family, and it felt like they’d made no progress in finding him.