Chapter Four – “An Unquiet Frame”

Vivienne Langford | First Person POV

The boy had been gone by the time I turned around again.

I searched the gallery, called out once — not loud, not in panic, just to prove to myself he had been real — but there was no answer. The wing had emptied. Somewhere nearby, a grandfather clock rang out four sharp notes.

I stayed long enough to question the receptionist, but she had not seen a boy. No student groups on the roster. No workshops scheduled that day. I showed her the second photograph, the one he had given me. She barely glanced at it.

“I’m sorry,” she said kindly, in that way small towns offer condolences they don’t understand. “We have lots of visitors. The faces all blur together.”

I didn’t press.

There are moments when pressing becomes a kind of desperation. And I had learned not to look too eager for truth. People mistake that for madness.

I drove home with the second photo tucked in my coat.

The figure in the background — slightly clearer now — still eluded identification. It wasn’t the boy. Too tall. The shoulders were squared, the silhouette adult. Not fully in frame. The arm was extended slightly, like it was reaching for something. Or someone.

There was no timestamp.

No marking.

Just the same eerie weight: proof that someone had been watching me long before I knew I was worth watching.

Back at the Langford house, the mail sat untouched on the marble foyer table. I hadn’t opened a letter in days. There was nothing I needed from the outside world — not condolences, not company. Not now.

Instead, I returned to Edward’s office. Not to mourn. To search.

He had been keeping something from me. I had always known that. Not in the dramatic sense — not a secret affair, not a criminal past — but something quieter. A space between us that he never let me enter. A locked drawer. A password I was never allowed to memorize.

I opened the filing cabinet first. Contracts. Letters. Curator agreements. All meticulously labeled. I skipped to the drawer marked Donors — Private. That was Edward’s code for the money that came with strings.

Inside: sealed envelopes, mostly unopened. But one stood out — marked in blue ink: G. Halberg — RE: Archive 47.

There was no donor with that name in our museum system.

I opened it.

A single sheet.

Typed.

Edward,

Per our arrangement, the piece must be moved before the official exhibit opens. You assured me Room 17 would remain restricted. If the girl has returned to the building, we may already be too late. She should never have come back.

– G.

There was no address. No signature. Just the letter and the date.

Three weeks before Edward died.

I didn’t sleep that night. I lay awake listening to the radiator breathe and the silence tick like a bomb.

My mind returned to Room 17.

To Archive 47.

To the figure behind me in the photograph.

Something was moving beneath the polished surface of this life I had so carefully constructed.

And someone — maybe many someones — wanted me to forget.

Which meant I had to remember.