Chapter 4 - The First Lie
Adrian didn’t speak for nearly a minute.
“My father was murdered?”
Eleanor sat beneath the staircase.
“Yes.”
The word changed the house.
For seventeen years Adrian had believed Charles Blackwood had suffered a heart attack inside his study.
No autopsy controversy.
No investigation.
No mystery.
Now that certainty vanished.
“What happened?”
Eleanor pressed both hands together.
“Charles had been investigating financial theft.”
“Victor?”
“I believed so.”
Sophie listened.
“Grace discovered transfers involving companies Victor controlled.”
“Why wasn’t he prosecuted?”
“Because the records disappeared.”
“Who took them?”
“We never knew.”
Eleanor looked toward Sophie.
“Grace had made a copy.”
“The ledger.”
“Yes.”
Adrian paced away.
“My father confronted Victor.”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Charles planned to remove him from the company. Before he could, there was a fire in the west archive.”
Sophie remembered her mother’s fear of smoke.
Grace had never allowed candles in their apartment.
Not once.
“Was my mother there?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor’s voice weakened.
“Charles was also there.”
The fire destroyed financial records and nearly killed them both.
Charles survived.
Grace survived.
Two weeks later Charles died.
“Heart attack?” Adrian asked.
Eleanor shook her head.
“He collapsed after dinner.”
Sophie felt cold.
“What did the doctor say?”
“Cardiac arrest.”
“That isn’t the same as murder.”
“No.”
Eleanor looked at her son.
“But Charles had no heart disease.”
Adrian stared.
“You investigated?”
“I tried.”
“Police?”
“Victor convinced the board that scandal would destroy the company.”
Adrian laughed bitterly.
“And you listened?”
“I had a fourteen-year-old son.”
“You protected the company.”
“I protected you.”
The anger left Adrian’s face for one second.
Eleanor continued.
“Grace believed Charles had been poisoned.”
“Evidence?”
“She had none.”
“Then why did she leave?”
“Because someone broke into her apartment and left a photograph of Sophie sleeping in her crib.”
Sophie stopped breathing.
“What?”
“You were eleven months old.”
Eleanor’s voice trembled.
“Written across the photograph were the words: NEXT TIME WE DON’T MISS.”
Sophie felt physically sick.
Her mother had never told her.
Not once.
“I helped Grace disappear.”
“The payments,” Sophie whispered.
“Yes.”
“Protection money?”
“Living expenses. Relocation. Legal assistance.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She wanted you to have a normal life.”
Sophie laughed through tears.
“She spent my entire childhood checking windows.”
No one answered.
Adrian sat across from his mother.
“Where is the ledger?”
“I don’t know.”
“Grace never told you?”
“She said Charles gave her instructions the night before he died.”
“What instructions?”
“If anything happened to him, she was to hide the original documents somewhere no Blackwood would think to search.”
Sophie suddenly remembered the wooden box beneath her mother’s bed.
After Grace died, Sophie had opened it.
Inside were family photographs.
A cheap watch.
Several old letters.
And one strange postcard of Blackwood Manor.
She had thrown almost everything into storage.
Her pulse accelerated.
“My mother kept a photograph of this house.”
Eleanor looked at her.
“What kind?”
“Not a photograph.”
Sophie corrected herself.
“A postcard.”
“What was on the back?”
“I don’t remember.”
Adrian stood.
“Where is it?”
“My storage unit.”
They left the mansion before midnight.
At 12:42 a.m., Sophie unlocked a metal storage door on Chicago’s north side.
Boxes filled the cramped space.
She found Grace’s belongings near the rear.
The wooden box was exactly where she remembered.
Inside lay the postcard.
Blackwood Manor in summer.
On the back, Grace had written one sentence:
THE TREE REMEMBERS WHAT THE HOUSE FORGETS.
Adrian stared at it.
Sophie turned the card over again.
Something slid from behind the photograph.
A tiny paper strip.
Three numbers.
4 — 17 — 29
Adrian went still.
“What?”
“My father’s study has twenty-nine floor panels.”
Sophie stared at him.
“How do you know?”
“Because I counted them when I was a child.”
They looked at one another.
Not a code.
May you like
Positions.
And whatever Grace had hidden seventeen years earlier might still be beneath the floor.
