Chapter 9
Anna’s journal became the center of everything.
Not the whole journal.
The missing pages.
There were cut marks near the spine.
Six pages removed.
Michael said he had not taken them.
Evelyn said nothing.
Grant Keller knew nothing about journals.
Victor Sloane denied knowing any of us.
That meant the pages mattered.
I went home for the first time since the luncheon without Lily.
She stayed at the hospital with my sister Rebecca, who had flown in overnight and nearly tore Michael apart at the station with her bare hands.
I stood in Anna’s study.
Dust floated in the sunlight.
Her desk still smelled faintly of cedar and lavender.
I had avoided this room for two years.
Grief had made it sacred.
Fear had made it locked.
Now necessity opened it.
Maya Torres, my private investigator, searched with me.
She was small, sharp, and never impressed.
“People hide things where emotion protects them,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you avoided this room. So Anna may have hidden something here.”
That hurt.
Because it was true.
We searched books.
Drawers.
Chair cushions.
Picture frames.
Nothing.
Then I saw Lily’s old dollhouse in the corner.
I had built it.
Anna had painted it.
Lily had broken the little staircase when she was four.
Anna fixed it with a hollow wooden piece from my workshop.
My hands moved before my mind caught up.
I lifted the staircase.
Something rattled.
Maya looked over.
Inside were folded pages.
Six of them.
Anna’s missing journal entries.
I sat on the floor.
Maya crouched beside me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
I unfolded the first page.
If Evelyn and Michael move against Daniel, check Victor Sloane. He is using family court trusts to launder debt.
The second page named judges.
Accounts.
Shell charities.
The third page made my blood stop.
If I die before I can prove it, do not let them call it an accident too quickly.
I stared at Anna’s words.
Too quickly.
May you like
My wife had not only feared for Lily.
She had feared for herself.
