Chapter 6
The police arrived through the storm.
Victoria tried to become fragile the moment she saw uniforms.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
She cried without tears.
She said Grace attacked her.
She said Lily had been coached.
She said I was confused because Grace was an old obsession.
Then Marcus played the kitchen footage.
The officer’s face hardened.
Victoria stopped crying.
Grace gave her statement from the breakfast chair because she could not stand without pain.
Lily sat on her lap.
A paramedic checked Grace’s shoulder and said she needed an X-ray.
Grace tried to refuse.
“I can’t leave Lily.”
I spoke before I thought.
“I’ll come with you.”
Grace looked at me.
The silence between us held five years.
She did not trust me.
She had no reason to.
Clara touched her arm.
“I will ride with you both.”
Grace nodded to Clara, not to me.
I accepted that.
Victoria was arrested for assault.
As they led her out, she leaned toward me.
“You think this is over because you called police?”
I said nothing.
She smiled.
“My father knows where every body is buried in your company.”
The officer guided her forward.
Charles Whitmore called my phone six times before the ambulance left.
I did not answer.
At the hospital, Lily refused to sit beside me.
She stayed glued to Grace.
I sat across the room and watched nurses examine the bruise on Grace’s shoulder.
No fracture.
Deep tissue trauma.
Painful.
Visible.
Real.
Lily finally looked at me.
“Do you live in the big house?”
“Yes.”
“Mommy cleans it.”
Shame struck hard.
“I didn’t know who she was.”
“She knew you.”
Grace closed her eyes.
“Lily.”
“It’s true,” Lily whispered.
I looked at Grace.
“Why did you take the job?”
She looked away.
“Because I needed proof.”
“Of what?”
“That Charles and Victoria were watching us. That they were connected to what happened five years ago.”
“Did you find it?”
Before she could answer, my phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
A photo.
Grace’s blue box.
The one Lily had mentioned.
Open.
Empty.
Then another message.
You should have believed Charles.
Grace saw my face.
“What?”
I turned the phone toward her.
May you like
She went pale.
“They were in my apartment.”
