It was Isabel, still kneeling on the marble floor beside Eleanor, who finally spoke, her voice barely above a whisper, trembling with a fear that seemed to require considerable courage to overcome. "Sir," she said, her tear-filled eyes lifting to meet Daniel's directly, "please. Please check the blue."
Daniel turned toward her, confusion evident in his expression. "The blue? What do you mean?"
"The blue door," Isabel said, her voice gaining slightly more urgency now, though it remained hushed, almost fearful of being overheard. "The storage room at the end of the east hallway. The one with the blue paint. Please, sir, just look inside."
Daniel's gaze shifted between Isabel's desperate, pleading expression and Vivian, whose earlier satisfied composure had, for the first time since he'd entered the foyer, begun to visibly falter.
"Daniel, that's just a storage closet," Vivian said quickly, her voice losing some of its earlier honeyed warmth. "There's nothing there worth—"
But Daniel was already rising to his feet, his attention fully redirected now, some instinct telling him that Isabel's trembling, desperate insistence carried far more weight than anything Vivian had offered him in the last several minutes. He looked once more at his grandmother, still kneeling and tearful on the marble floor, then at Isabel, whose wide, frightened eyes held his with unmistakable, silent urgency.
"Show me," he said, already moving toward the east hallway, leaving Vivian standing frozen in the foyer behind him, her carefully constructed composure finally, visibly beginning to crack.