Chapter 3 - WHAT MY HUSBAND LEFT BEHIND
We escaped through the service elevator.
Jenna had worked events at the hotel years earlier and remembered that the bridal floor connected to the kitchen corridor.
I traded my heels for a pair of Lily’s emergency sneakers from her overnight bag.
They were too small.
I didn’t care.
We ran.
By the time Daniel realized we were gone, we were already in Jenna’s SUV.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“My house.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s exactly where he’ll expect you to go.”
Lily leaned forward from the back seat.
“Dad’s office.”
The word made me turn.
She meant her real father.
Michael.
My husband had died four years earlier in a construction accident.
He had been thirty-eight.
One minute we were arguing about whether Lily needed a bigger bicycle.
The next, a police officer was standing on my porch.
I had spent the next two years barely functioning.
Then Daniel came into my life.
Patient.
Steady.
Safe.
Or so I thought.
“What about your father’s office?”
Lily looked embarrassed.
“There’s a box.”
“What box?”
“The one Grandpa gave me.”
My father-in-law, Henry Walker, had died nine months earlier.
Before his death, he had transferred Michael’s remaining business shares into a trust for Lily.
Daniel had been unusually interested in that trust.
At the time, I thought he was trying to help.
Now every memory looked different.
“Grandpa told me not to open it until someone tried to take Dad’s house away.”
Jenna slammed on the brakes at a red light.
“Excuse me?”
“You never told me that,” I said.
“Grandpa said not to tell anyone.”
“Where is it?”
“In Dad’s old office.”
The office had remained locked since Michael died.
I barely went inside.
Daniel never liked that room.
He said it made the house feel stuck in the past.
Forty minutes later, we entered through the garage.
Everything looked normal.
Too normal.
Our half-finished wedding decorations were still scattered across the kitchen.
White ribbons.
Boxes of candles.
A sign reading THE HARPER-BENNETT FAMILY.
I wanted to burn it.
Lily ran upstairs.
“Wait!”
I followed.
Michael’s office was at the end of the hall.
The door was open.
I stopped.
I knew I had locked it.
The room had been searched.
Desk drawers hung open.
Books covered the floor.
The wall safe stood exposed behind a painting.
Empty.
“No,” Lily whispered.
She crawled beneath the desk.
Her fingers searched along the underside.
Then she smiled weakly.
“He didn’t find it.”
She pulled loose a strip of wood.
A small black envelope dropped into her hands.
Inside was a flash drive.
And a note in Henry’s handwriting.
Claire,
If you’re reading this, someone has become interested in Michael’s estate.
Do not trust anyone who tells you the trust exists only for Lily’s benefit.
Michael discovered something before he died.
Something connected to the land beneath your house.
My knees weakened.
“What land?”
Jenna looked over my shoulder.
There was more.
Michael believed certain people would eventually come for you.
I hoped he was wrong.
If Daniel Harper is one of them, do not let him know you have this drive.
I stopped breathing.
Daniel and I had not met until nearly two years after Michael died.
May you like
Jenna stared at me.
“How did your dead father-in-law know Daniel’s name?”
