Chapter 10 — The Song Roderick Remembered
Mara stood.
Roderick stared at her.
Same dark eyes as their mother.
Same narrow smile.
But something else stopped him.
Mara touched the silver chain around her neck.
A tiny wooden rabbit hung from it.
Roderick froze.
“Where did you get that?”
Mara looked down.
“My adoptive mother said it came with me.”
Roderick’s eyes filled.
He remembered the toy rabbit.
Not the one he left under the garden tree later.
An earlier one.
He had tied a string around a tiny wooden rabbit and placed it beside Mirelle’s crib.
“I gave you that.”
Mara’s face changed.
“You did?”
Roderick nodded.
“I think so.”
“I was five.”
“Dad said babies couldn’t play with my toys because they were too small.”
“So I found something wooden.”
Mara sat slowly.
“I’ve carried this for years.”
Roderick sat across from her.
For a while, neither knew what to say.
Finally Mara smiled sadly.
“This is weird.”
Roderick laughed through tears.
“Extremely.”
That broke the tension.
They talked for three hours.
Mara described her childhood with the Harcourts.
It had been loving.
Her adoptive parents never hid that she was adopted.
But they had been told her biological family wanted complete confidentiality.
When Eleanor died, Mara found the original paperwork.
That’s when she discovered Roderick.
“Did you resent me?” Roderick asked.
“For what?”
“Growing up here.”
Mara shook her head.
“I resented the adults who made us strangers.”
“Not the five-year-old they lied to.”
Roderick looked down.
“I spent years believing you were dead.”
Mara’s eyes filled.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do it.”
“I know.”
“But I’m still sorry you carried that.”
They compared records.
Dates matched.
Documents matched.
Then Mara asked if Roderick remembered a lullaby.
She hummed a simple melody.
Roderick stopped moving.
He knew it.
“Mom sang that.”
Mara smiled through tears.
“Eleanor said it was the only song I already seemed to know when I came to them.”
Roderick closed his eyes.
Isabeau had sung it to both children.
Another piece of family history had survived despite every attempt to separate them.
Before they left, Mara asked:
“What happens now?”
Roderick answered honestly.
“I don’t know.”
“But I want another meeting.”
Mara nodded.
“So do I.”
Roderick returned home.
Eudora ran toward him.
“Did you see her?”
He smiled.
“Yes.”
“Is she nice?”
“I think so.”
Then Eudora asked if Mara could come through the wardrobe again.
Roderick’s answer revealed what he intended to do with the hidden passage itself.