Chapter 8
None of us understood the letter.
Not at first.
Ryan read it three times.
“You forgot the coffin.”
Frank went pale.
I noticed immediately.
“What?”
He stared at the page.
“My funeral.”
Ryan frowned.
“What about it?”
Frank lowered himself into a chair.
“If I wasn’t in the coffin…”
He didn’t finish.
My stomach tightened.
“Who was?”
Silence.
Ryan whispered, “It was closed.”
Frank looked at him.
“Your mother said the body was damaged during transport.”
Ryan nodded slowly.
“That’s what she told everyone.”
I called Hale.
The next morning, authorities obtained permission to exhume the grave.
I hated that we needed another horror.
But Diane’s letter wasn’t random.
She wanted us afraid.
Or distracted.
Maybe both.
Two days later, Hale came to the house.
His expression told me they found something.
Ryan stood.
“Who was in there?”
Hale sat.
“The remains belong to a male approximately forty-five to fifty-five years old.”
Frank was seventy now.
He had been sixty-seven when he supposedly died.
“Not Dad,” Ryan said.
“No.”
“Who?”
“We’re running DNA.”
Three days later, we got the answer.
Thomas Reed.
A former groundskeeper at Diane’s estate.
Reported missing three years earlier.
My blood turned cold.
“Did Diane kill him?”
Hale raised a hand.
“We don’t know.”
Frank looked shaken.
“I knew Thomas.”
“What happened to him?” Ryan asked.
“He stopped coming to work around the time I was imprisoned.”
Hale opened another file.
“Thomas had a history of unstable housing. No close family nearby. His disappearance received limited attention.”
Perfect victim.
Someone Diane thought nobody would search for.
The medical examiner found sedatives in preserved tissue.
The same drug Peterson supplied to Frank.
Peterson was questioned again.
This time he panicked.
He denied killing Thomas.
But he admitted helping Diane hide the body.
Ryan stared at Hale.
“My mother put a dead man in my father’s coffin.”
“Yes.”
“Did she cause his death?”
“We’re investigating.”
The case changed again.
Now possible homicide hung over everything.
Diane’s attorney tried to block further questioning.
But the prosecution had momentum.
Investigators searched every property connected to her.
They found Thomas’s old work jacket burned behind a storage building.
His identification was hidden in Diane’s locked desk.
And security footage from an old backup server showed him entering the blue room hallway the night before he disappeared.
Frank remembered.
“He found me.”
“What?” I asked.
“He opened the door.”
Frank’s breathing changed.
Ryan sat beside him.
“Dad, slow down.”
Frank closed his eyes.
“It was early. I was barely conscious. Thomas came in carrying tools.”
“What happened?”
“He saw the chain.”
Frank’s hands trembled.
“He said he was calling the police.”
My throat tightened.
“And then?”
“Diane came in.”
Frank opened his eyes.
“She told him I was sick.”
He swallowed.
“Thomas didn’t believe her.”
“What happened next?”
“Peterson arrived.”
Frank pressed a hand to his forehead.
“They injected me.”
Ryan leaned closer.
“What happened to Thomas?”
“I heard shouting.”
Frank’s voice broke.
“Then something heavy hit the floor.”
Nobody spoke.
Hale wrote everything down.
The murder charge came a week later.
According to Peterson’s final confession, Diane struck Thomas with a heavy bronze sculpture when he tried to leave.
Peterson claimed Thomas died from the injury.
Instead of calling police, Diane saw an opportunity.
A body.
A closed coffin.
A believable death.
She used Thomas to complete Frank’s fake funeral.
Even Peterson looked horrified while confessing it.
Diane still denied everything.
Trial preparation took months.
During that time, life slowly changed.
Frank moved into a small house near us rather than return to the mansion.
He sold Diane’s estate after the court released it from evidence.
The blue room remained sealed until the sale.
He never went back.
Neither did Lily.
Ryan continued therapy.
So did I.
Separately.
Then together.
Not because I had decided to save our marriage.
Because we needed to learn how to parent after betrayal.
One evening, our therapist asked Ryan, “What do you think Emily needs from you?”
Ryan answered immediately.
“Consistency.”
I looked at him.
He continued.
“She doesn’t need promises. She needs evidence.”
That stayed with me.
And he gave it.
He stopped defending Diane.
Stopped minimizing conflict.
Stopped asking me to keep peace at my own expense.
When Lily said she was uncomfortable, he listened.
When she said no, he respected it.
When she had nightmares, he sat outside her bedroom door until she slept.
He didn’t pressure me.
Months passed.
The bruise on Lily’s forehead disappeared.
The fear took longer.
But she started laughing loudly again.
Running through the house.
Leaving doors open.
One afternoon, she asked Frank to teach her how to read the old pocket watch.
He placed it in her small hands.
“This belongs to you.”
She shook her head.
“It’s yours.”
“You saved my life with it.”
Lily smiled.
“No. You saved your life.”
Frank cried.
So did I.
The night before Diane’s trial, Ryan found me on the porch.
“Tomorrow might be bad.”
“I know.”
He sat beside me.
After a long silence, he said, “Whatever happens, I’m done being afraid of her.”
I looked at him.
“I’m not.”
He nodded.
“That’s fair.”
I appreciated that too.
Fear didn’t disappear because someone said it should.
Then he added, “But you won’t face her alone.”
I believed that.
For the first time, I reached for his hand intentionally.
May you like
Tomorrow, Diane would finally face a jury.
And this time, she couldn’t control who was allowed to speak.
