Chapter 27
Brooklyn Sloane
Brook turned the dial until the flame extinguished before moving the skillet to a cold burner.
Gwenyth had displayed no hesitation. No confusion.
There hadn’t been a sliver of uncertainty about where anything was or what to do with it.
While Porter and the others had claimed there were moments of lucidity, those flashes were very convenient.
Brook walked soundlessly out of the kitchen.
The hallway was dim despite the morning sun on the faded wallpaper.
She paused at the base of the staircase to find the second floor empty.
Gwenyth’s door was closed, the corridor leading to the entrance dark and silent.
Whatever was happening up there, whether Gwenyth was retrieving the pill or standing at the window attempting to figure out her next move, Brook had a brief window for a chance to prove her suspicions.
She turned and entered the dining room.
Bit’s chair was pushed back from the table at an angle, his laptop open but the screen dark from inactivity.
She assumed he’d stepped out to check one of the cameras.
He’d mentioned that the unit near the greenhouse had been dropping its feed intermittently, and Bit wasn’t the type to let a technical problem sit.
The house was quiet in his absence.
The portable monitor at the far end of the table continued to glow.
The curtains were drawn against the morning sun, and the room had the enclosed, focused quality of a working space.
She zeroed in on the journals found in the hidden laboratory.
They were stacked on the table where the forensics team had left them after processing.
Numerous hardbound notebooks with dark covers, each one thick with pages, were arranged in a neat column beside Sylvie's workstation.
Brook had read through portions of them, but she hadn't been able to read them all thoroughly.
With another glance toward the staircase, she pulled a pair of latex gloves from the box on the table and worked them onto her hands. She sat down in her chair before pulling the stack toward her. She opened the evidence bag, retrieved the first journal, and opened it to the first page.
Helen Uche was in her mid-twenties when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Nestor's earlier entries were meticulous.
He included plants, compound names, dosage adjustments, and observations about her response to each treatment cycle.
He documented her appetite, sleep patterns, and the progression of her symptoms. His tone was mindful and hopeful, the handwriting of a man who believed that what he was doing might save her life.
His efforts didn't work.
The entries grew shorter as Helen declined.
The compound adjustments became more frequent, more desperate.
Nestor began noting his own emotional state between the clinical observations, brief sentences that broke through the professional detachment.
“I cannot sleep. Helen asked me to sit with her this evening. She says the lab is too quiet at night.”
And then the final entry.
“She told me about her roommate today. About the life she left behind. She spoke about the things she hoped to do if the treatment gave her more time. I did not have the courage to tell her what I already knew.”
Brook set Helen’s journal aside and opened the next.
Ruth Okafor had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.
The notebook's research structure was identical. Arrival, assessment, protocol, observations, decline, and a final page similar to that in Helen’s records.
A woman who had been hoping for a miracle had died in a hidden room behind a bookshelf while the world outside continued without her.
Brook moved through the journals one by one, hoping Nestor had mentioned his daughter at some point over his experiments.
The compounds changed as Nestor refined his approach, adjusting formulations based on what he’d learned from each previous patient.
He was learning from their deaths, applying those lessons to the next woman who arrived, and the next, and the pattern was both disciplined and heartbreaking.
He never stopped believing he was close to a breakthrough.
And every failure drove him deeper into the work rather than away from it.
Brook set Ruth Okafor’s journal on top of Helen’s and pressed her gloved fingers against the edge of the table.
The grandfather clock ticked from its place in the foyer.
She could even make out the faint sound of wind against the stone exterior.
Fortunately, nothing to indicate that Gwenyth had come out of her room.
Brook reached for the next journal.
The seven women had obviously come voluntarily.
That much was clear from the journals. They had arrived knowing the risks, understanding that Nestor’s treatment was untested and unsanctioned, and they had stayed because the alternative was returning to a world that had already told them there was nothing left to try.
The cot in the lab hadn’t been a prison.
It had been the last bed they would ever sleep in, and they had chosen it intentionally.
She exhaled slowly and reached for the remaining journal.
The cover was the same dark binding as the others, but there was no name written on the front.
There were no patient identifiers and no date ranges.
She opened it to the first page, and Nestor's handwriting was there, in the same small, precise script, but the content had changed. These weren’t treatment notes.
These were observations about daily life on the estate.
The greenhouse, the grounds, the weather, Porter’s work on the stone wall.
And Gwenyth.
The early entries read like a father’s private record of his daughter’s life.
From Gwenyth’s schoolwork to a conversation that they’d had over dinner about the difference between annuals and perennials.
He wrote with a quiet pride, noticeable in the way he lingered on small details that wouldn’t have mattered to anyone except a father.
Then the tone changed.
It didn’t happen all at once. It crept in between the lines.
“Gwenyth has become withdrawn. She no longer eats with me in the evenings. She has stopped asking about my work.”
Brook glanced toward the staircase. She hadn’t heard Gwenyth’s bedroom door open or caught the sound of muffled footsteps, but Brook sensed she was running out of time. She quickly skimmed the next few pages until a passage grabbed her focus.
“When I came inside from the greenhouse tonight, Gwenyth was sitting in the upstairs hallway. Not reading. Not doing anything. Just sitting. I asked if she was alright. She said yes without looking at me.”
A few entries later, the withdrawal had sharpened into something else.
“Gwenyth has begun asking questions about the women. Not about the research or the compounds. About the women themselves. How long do they stay? Where do they sleep? Do I sit with them the way I used to sit with Claudine?”
Nestor noted that the questions weren’t accusatory in tone, but he added an additional observation.
“There is a coldness in her voice that was not there before.”
Brook turned the page.
“She stood outside the library door for over an hour tonight. I was inside the lab, and when I came out through the entrance, she was there. She had not knocked. She had not called out. She was standing in the hallway with her arms at her sides. When I asked what she needed, she said nothing and walked away.”
Nestor documented an argument.
“Gwenyth confronted me in the kitchen this evening. She said I spend more time with strangers than with my own daughter. She said her mother would be ashamed of me. She said the women in the greenhouse are taking me away from her the same way the cancer took her mother, and that I am letting it happen.”
He wrote that he’d tried to explain, tried to tell her that the work was for Claudine.
“I told her that everything I am doing is because I could not save her mother. The woman I loved more than life itself. I am trying to make sure no one else has to suffer that loss.”
The entry ended with a single line.
“Gwenyth listened without expression and then said, very quietly, that I should have loved her enough to stop.”
Brook stopped reading. She removed her hands from the journal and placed them flat on the table, her gloved fingers spread wide against the wood.
The baby shifted beneath her ribs, and she became aware of her own breathing in the still of the room.
She didn’t need to turn another page. The remaining entries after the argument were sparse. One or two lines here and there.
“I have started locking the lab when I leave.”
“Gwenyth has changed.”
“The girl I raised, the girl who listened to my stories about plants and laughed at the names I gave them, the girl who pressed wildflowers between the pages of my journals and left them for me to find, is not the same person living in this house.”
“I am afraid for my own daughter. Of my own daughter. Why can’t she understand that this is something I need to do?”
The admission did not appear until the bottom portion of the right page.
“I have taken to sleeping in the lab rather than my bedroom.”
“Gwenyth watches me from the upstairs window when I cross the grounds at night. Her face is visible behind the glass. She does not move. She tracks my path between the house and the greenhouse, and she does not look away. I wish she would understand why I need to continue with my research.”
Brook slowly reached for the corner of the page, turning it to the final entries.