Chapter 3
Daniel drove while I called the police.
Patricia was heading toward his house.
We did not know why.
Lily sat in the back seat, still wearing her flower-girl dress.
I held her hand.
“Did Vanessa keep anything else there?”
Lily nodded.
“A blue box.”
“Where?”
“Under her bed.”
Daniel gripped the steering wheel.
“What was inside?”
“Mommy’s things.”
He looked at her through the mirror.
“What things?”
“Pictures. Letters. Her ring.”
Daniel’s face went pale.
Emma’s wedding ring had vanished after her funeral.
We had assumed it was lost at the hospital.
Vanessa had not even met Daniel then.
At least that was what she had always claimed.
We reached the house and found the front door open.
Daniel ran inside.
The home had been torn apart.
Cabinet doors hung open.
Desk drawers covered the floor.
The safe in Daniel’s office was empty.
“My laptop,” he said. “The trust documents.”
Lily’s mother had left her a large inheritance.
Daniel controlled the trust until Lily turned twenty-five, but every dollar had to be used for Lily’s care.
Vanessa had complained about it more than once.
She called it “money trapped behind a dead woman.”
A noise came from upstairs.
Daniel grabbed a fireplace poker.
I called out that the police were coming.
A figure rushed down the back stairs.
It was Patricia.
She carried a leather folder under one arm.
Daniel blocked the door.
“Put it down.”
Patricia tried to push past him.
He did not move.
“You ruined my daughter’s life,” she snapped.
“She hit Lily.”
“She was trying to build a family.”
“By stealing from my child?”
Police sirens approached.
Patricia looked toward the windows.
Then she threw the folder into the lit fireplace.
I grabbed the metal shovel and pulled it out before the flames could spread.
Several pages were burned along the edges.
One remained readable.
It was a petition naming Vanessa as Lily’s future legal guardian.
The document claimed Daniel suffered from violent episodes and alcohol addiction.
Neither was true.
It also claimed I was mentally unstable.
Patricia ran for the patio.
Two officers entered through the front door and stopped her.
While they questioned everyone, Lily led me upstairs.
Vanessa’s suitcase lay open on the bedroom floor.
The blue box was gone.
But beneath the bed, I found a photograph.
It showed Vanessa and Emma standing together outside a restaurant.
The date printed in the corner was five years earlier.
Daniel stared at it.
“Vanessa told me she never knew Emma.”
I turned the photograph over.
There was a message written on the back.
You cannot keep lying to Daniel. Tell him before I do.
It was in Emma’s handwriting.
Daniel sat on the edge of the bed.
His canceled wedding was no longer the worst discovery of the day.
Vanessa had known his late wife.
And Emma had known one of Vanessa’s secrets.
Lily pulled gently on his sleeve.
“Daddy, there’s something else.”
She walked to the closet and pointed at an air vent near the floor.
“Vanessa talked to Grandma Patricia through there.”
Daniel removed the cover.
A small recording device had been taped inside.
It had captured weeks of conversations in the bedroom.
He pressed play.
Vanessa’s voice filled the room.
“Once Daniel signs the marriage license, we move to the next stage.”
Patricia answered.
“And the child?”
May you like
Vanessa paused.
“Lily won’t be living here much longer.”
