Chapter 7 - The House Across the Street
The police allowed Daniel to retrieve clothes from our home the next morning.
He arrived with an officer.
I was not there.
Neither was Emma.
But Harold watched from across the street.
Later, he called.
“He went directly to the office.”
“For clothes?”
“That’s what caught my attention.”
“Did he take anything?”
“The officer prevented him from removing documents.”
I felt a small flash of relief.
“Then he went upstairs, packed clothing and left.”
“Where is he staying?”
“A hotel.”
“Which one?”
“Claire.”
“I know. I’m not supposed to go near him.”
“And you won’t.”
I looked through the window of my father’s guest room.
The sky was gray.
Emma was downstairs watching cartoons.
Rebecca had gone to meet investigators.
I had spent most of the morning trying to solve my mother’s password.
Nothing worked.
Not my birthday.
Not Emma’s.
Not Mom and Dad’s anniversary.
Not the name of the street where I grew up.
“Do you remember my mother’s diary?” I asked Harold.
“The red one?”
“You knew about it?”
“Your mother wrote in it constantly.”
“Daniel took it.”
“How do you know?”
“Emma saw him.”
Silence.
“When?”
“The day Mom died.”
“That needs to go to investigators.”
“It will.”
“Anything else?”
“Emma said they argued.”
“What about?”
“She doesn’t remember.”
“That’s okay.”
I hated those words.
Emma was four.
She should not be carrying evidence inside her memory.
We agreed not to question her further ourselves.
A child-interview specialist could speak with her in a way that minimized pressure.
That afternoon, a detective named Sonia Alvarez came to Dad’s house.
She was in her early forties, calm, observant and uninterested in drama.
I liked her immediately.
She explained the investigation carefully.
Daniel was facing charges related to the assault.
The financial evidence was being reviewed separately.
No one was treating my mother’s death as a homicide.
Not yet.
“You have to understand,” Alvarez said, “the notation in a notebook is suspicious, but it proves nothing about how your mother died.”
“I understand.”
“Her death was medically certified.”
“A ruptured aneurysm.”
“Yes.”
“Could Daniel have caused that?”
“Not based on anything we currently know.”
I nodded.
Strangely, I was relieved.
I wanted the truth.
I did not want the worst possible truth merely because I hated him.
“Can we recover Mom’s diary?”
“If Daniel has it and we establish relevance, possibly.”
“He already knows we’re looking.”
“How?”
“He called me.”
Alvarez’s eyes sharpened.
“When?”
We told her.
She asked for the number.
Then she asked about the encrypted flash drive.
Rebecca had already turned over a forensic copy.
The original remained secured.
“The file may be damaged,” Alvarez said.
“Or?”
“Or heavily encrypted.”
“My mother said I knew the password.”
“Think about things specific to the two of you.”
“I have.”
“Not dates.”
“What, then?”
“Phrases. Stories. Private jokes.”
After Alvarez left, I sat with my father at the kitchen table.
“Did Mom have a phrase she always used with me?”
Dad smiled faintly.
“Hundreds.”
“Useful.”
“You two argued in quotations.”
“That is true.”
He thought.
“She called you Cricket.”
“I tried that.”
“Your first dog.”
“Bailey. Tried it.”
“The summer you drove her car into the mailbox.”
“Please never mention that.”
Dad laughed.
For the first time since the attack, so did I.
Then I remembered something.
My mother had a rule when I was little.
Whenever I was frightened, she asked me one question.
What do we know for sure?
If thunder scared me:
What do we know for sure?
We are inside.
If I got lost at a department store:
What do we know for sure?
Mom knows where we entered.
If I thought everyone at school hated me:
What do we know for sure?
One bad day is not everyone.
Mom believed fear grew in the space between facts.
“What do we know for sure,” I whispered.
Dad looked at me.
“What?”
I grabbed the laptop.
The encryption prompt appeared.
I typed:
WHATDOWEKNOWFORSURE
Wrong password.
My hope vanished.
Then Dad said, “Your mother hated capital letters.”
I tried lowercase.
Wrong.
“She also hated spaces in passwords,” I said.
“Try punctuation.”
Mom always used the same punctuation.
A question mark.
I typed:
whatdoweknowforsure?
The screen changed.
Dad inhaled.
A folder opened.
Inside were dozens of documents.
Bank statements.
Emails.
Photographs.
Spreadsheets.
And one video file.
The file name was simply:
CLAIRE.
My hand trembled as I clicked it.
My mother appeared on screen.
She was sitting at her desk.
Alive.
Her gray hair pinned back.
Her reading glasses low on her nose.
For a second I could not breathe.
“Claire,” she said.
Dad covered his mouth.
“If you’re watching this, then I either found the courage to tell you everything…”
Mom paused.
“…or something prevented me from doing it.”
My skin went cold.
“I need you to understand something before you see the documents in this folder. Daniel is not merely hiding money.”
Dad leaned closer.
Mom continued.
“He has been using your identity for years.”
That part we knew.
Then she said:
“And I believe he deliberately married you because of your name.”
I stared at the screen.
My name?
Mom looked directly into the camera.
“Your grandfather left something Daniel desperately wants.”
I turned toward Dad.
“What grandfather?”
Dad looked just as confused.
Mom continued.
“Thomas does not know about it.”
My father whispered, “What?”
“It was Margaret’s father,” I said.
My maternal grandfather had died when I was seven.
I barely remembered him.
On the video, Mom lifted an envelope.
“The Whitmore property was never sold.”
Dad stood.
“That’s impossible.”
Mom continued.
“And if Daniel gets control of Claire’s assets before the trust matures, he may gain access to land currently worth more than twenty million dollars.”
The room stopped.
Twenty million.
I could barely comprehend it.
Then Mom’s expression changed.
“There is one person who knows Daniel’s entire plan.”
She held up a photograph.
A man stood beside Daniel outside Bennett Restoration.
I had seen him before.
Many times.
Daniel’s business partner.
His best friend.
Michael Reeves.
Mom looked into the camera.
“Claire, if Michael tells you he knows nothing, he is lying.”
A knock sounded at Dad’s front door.
We both jumped.
Dad walked toward it.
Harold stood outside.
And beside him was Michael Reeves.
His face was gray.
“I need to talk to Claire,” he said.
Harold looked at me.
Michael swallowed.
“Daniel knows she opened Margaret’s file.”
I gripped the table.
“How?”
May you like
Michael looked toward the street.
“Because I told him.”
