Chapter 10 - Saint Oran’s
Saint Oran’s sat behind a line of dead trees thirty minutes outside the city, though Belle remembered it as farther.
Some places stretched distance by dread.
Renick did not take Micah there. On that, Belle became iron. No argument, no negotiation, no quiet dangerous stare could move her. Her son stayed in Aisling’s townhouse with Rosa, Nora, and two guards Renick trusted enough to know by first name but not enough to turn his back on.
Belle did go.
Not because Renick asked.
Because Maribel was tied to a chair somewhere behind a blue door, and Belle had once cleaned that door with bleach while children cried on the other side.
The ride to Saint Oran’s happened in a black van with no interior handles on the rear doors. Belle noticed immediately.
Renick noticed her noticing.
“For prisoners?” she asked.
“For emergencies.”
“Same hardware.”
He did not deny it.
Rain began before they left the city. By the time the van turned off the main road, the sky was low and gray, and the old clinic emerged through the trees like a memory trying to rot itself into the ground.
The front sign was gone.
The fence was chained.
The building still wore the false cheer of old institutional money: red brick, white columns, a faded mural of birds on the entry wall. Half of the east wing was blackened from fire. The rest stood quiet.
Too quiet.
Belle’s stomach clenched.
“I used to come through the service entrance,” she said.
Renick gestured to Eli. They went around back.
The service entrance was boarded, but the lock was new.
Renick looked at Belle.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t look at me. I cleaned floors. I didn’t break into haunted clinics.”
Eli almost smiled.
Renick did not.
He picked the lock himself.
That surprised her.
“What?” he asked.
Belle shrugged. “I assumed men like you had other people do illegal things.”
“Only when they’re slower than me.”
Inside, the air smelled like damp plaster and old smoke.
Belle’s body remembered before her mind did.
The hallway. The faded yellow line painted along the floor so children could “follow sunshine.” The reception window where a nurse once told Belle not to make eye contact with the families. The little speakers in the ceiling, silent now.
No birdsong.
Thank God.
They moved with flashlights. Renick’s men spread out with weapons drawn. Belle stayed close to Renick because she knew the layout, and because some terrible part of her believed danger would reach him first.
At the stairwell, she stopped.
“There,” she whispered.
The basement door had been painted over since she last saw it.
But beneath the peeling white, blue showed through.
Renick touched the paint.
His hand came away dusty.
He tried the handle.
Locked.
Belle stepped back.
Renick nodded once to Eli.
Eli kicked the door near the latch. The sound cracked down the hallway like thunder. Once. Twice. On the third kick, the frame split.
The smell hit first.
Bleach. Damp concrete. Fear.
They descended.
The basement lights flickered on automatically halfway down.
Belle’s breath caught.
The corridor below had six doors.
Five white.
One blue.
From behind it came the faint sound of recorded birds.
Rosa’s mother was inside.
Belle knew it before they opened the door.
Renick did too.
He moved like a man approaching both salvation and execution.
Eli broke the lock.
The door swung inward.
Maribel Sosa sat tied to a chair beneath a square stained-glass window, exactly as in the photo. Her head hung forward. Silver tape crossed her mouth. Blood darkened one sleeve of her cardigan.
For one awful second, Belle thought they were too late.
Then Maribel lifted her head.
Renick made a sound Belle would never forget.
Not a word.
A broken piece of one.
He crossed the room and knelt before the woman who had helped raise him.
“Maribel.”
Her eyes flooded.
He removed the tape carefully. “Who did this?”
Maribel’s lips trembled. “Not Vivienne.”
Renick froze.
Belle stepped into the room.
Maribel looked at her, then past her as if expecting a child.
“The boy,” she rasped. “Keep the boy away from Brinley.”
Belle’s blood turned cold.
“Why?”
Maribel’s eyes filled with terror.
“Because Brinley remembers what Aisling hid.”
Renick leaned closer. “Where?”
Maribel shook her head violently.
The birdsong chirped from the white machine on the wall.
Then a speaker hidden somewhere in the room clicked.
A woman’s voice filled the basement, smooth as silk.
“Hello, Renick.”
Renick stood slowly.
Belle knew that voice.
Everyone on staff did.
Vivienne Kavanaugh.
“You always were too sentimental,” Vivienne said. “That was your wife’s problem too.”
Renick stared at the blue door.
Vivienne laughed softly through the speaker.
“Tell the maid to look under the chair.”
Belle looked down.
Taped beneath Maribel’s chair was a small envelope.
May you like
On it, in a dead woman’s handwriting, were two words:
For Bird.
