Chapter 5
I ran back into Emily’s room in the dark.
She was sitting upright in bed, screaming, the blanket tangled around her legs.
Arthur had woken and was reaching for her, but the darkness made everything feel wild and wrong.
“I’m here!” I shouted.
Emily reached toward my voice.
I grabbed her hand.
Another crash came from downstairs.
Then a police officer yelled, “Back door!”
A shot rang out.
Emily shrieked.
Arthur pulled both of us down beside the bed.
“Stay low.”
His voice shook, but his body covered Emily’s without hesitation.
For an old man who had been called weak and confused by his own daughter, he moved like love had given him twenty years back.
My phone flashlight trembled in my hand.
I turned it on.
The small beam cut across Emily’s terrified face.
“Grace,” she sobbed. “She found me.”
“No,” I said. “She won’t take you.”
Footsteps pounded up the stairs.
Detective Kent burst into the room with a gun in both hands.
“Everyone okay?”
Arthur nodded.
“Back window,” she ordered. “Now.”
I grabbed Emily.
Arthur took her other hand.
We moved fast.
The detective shoved the window open and helped us onto a small roof over the porch.
Cold night air hit my face.
Below us, officers shouted.
A dark figure ran across the yard toward the trees.
Not Vivian.
Too broad.
Owen Vale.
He turned and fired once.
The bullet struck the roof tiles near my foot.
I slipped.
Emily screamed.
Arthur grabbed my arm.
Detective Kent fired back.
Owen vanished into the trees.
A police car roared around the side of the house.
More lights flashed.
More shouting.
Detective Kent got us down a ladder from the porch roof.
My knees almost gave out when I touched the ground.
Emily clung to me so tightly I could barely breathe.
Arthur was pale, one hand pressed to his chest.
“Sir?” I asked.
“I’m fine.”
He was not fine.
But he stayed standing until Emily was inside a police cruiser under guard.
Then he sat hard on the the curb.
Paramedics checked him.
High blood pressure.
Shock.
Exhaustion.
The power had been cut from the outside.
The back door glass had been broken.
Owen had entered the house but fled when the officer confronted him.
Vivian had not been seen.
But I knew she had been part of it.
She wanted Emily afraid.
She wanted Arthur weak.
She wanted me gone.
Detective Kent took my phone and traced the call.
Burner.
Of course.
By sunrise, Arthur was taken to the hospital for observation.
Emily refused to leave me.
So I rode with her in the ambulance, holding her hand while Arthur slept with oxygen under his nose.
At the hospital, security placed us in a private wing.
Reporters crowded the lobby.
Vivian’s lawyers released a statement calling the entire situation “a tragic misunderstanding worsened by unauthorized household staff.”
Unauthorized household staff.
That was me.
They said I had manipulated a traumatized child.
They said Arthur had cognitive issues.
They said Emily had been receiving private care.
They said Vivian Blackwood was cooperating from an undisclosed location because she feared for her safety.
I watched the statement on a hospital television and felt rage crawl up my throat.
Emily was asleep beside Arthur’s bed.
Her wrists were bandaged.
Arthur stared at the screen with a dead expression.
“She is doing it again,” he said.
Detective Kent muted the TV.
“Then we stop her with proof.”
Arthur looked at her.
“You have the files.”
“We have some files. But Vivian’s foundation records are encrypted. The basement drive is damaged.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
“Clara had a storage unit.”
Everyone turned.
He opened his eyes slowly.
“She kept documents outside the family. She told Daniel once, ‘If your sister burns the house, I won’t burn with it.’ I thought it was a joke.”
Detective Kent leaned forward.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. But Daniel might have.”
“Daniel is dead.”
Arthur swallowed.
“There may be a key in his watch.”
He pointed to his own wrist.
“I gave my son a watch when Emily was born. Vivian returned it to me after the accident. Said Daniel had been wearing it.”
“Where is it now?”
“At the mansion. In my old study.”
The mansion was still a crime scene.
Detective Kent could get it.
But I saw the hesitation on Arthur’s face.
“What?” I asked.
He looked at Emily.
Then at me.
“I don’t think the watch she returned was Daniel’s.”
Detective Kent frowned.
“Why?”
“Daniel’s watch had an inscription. Vivian gave me one with no inscription. I was too destroyed to notice until months later. When I asked, she told me grief was confusing me.”
My stomach tightened.
“Then where is the real one?”
Arthur’s eyes filled.
“On Daniel, maybe.”
The room went silent.
The accident.
The supposed drowning.
The bodies.
“What happened that day?” I asked softly.
Arthur looked at Emily.
“She deserves the truth.”
Detective Kent nodded.
Arthur’s voice broke as he spoke.
“Daniel, Clara, and Emily were driving to the lake house. Vivian said there was a crash on the bridge. The car went into the water. Daniel and Clara died. Emily’s body was supposedly found later. Closed casket. Vivian handled everything.”
“But Emily wasn’t in the car,” I said.
Emily stirred in her sleep.
Arthur whispered, “No.”
Detective Kent’s face hardened.
“Then we need to exhume the graves.”
Arthur flinched like she had struck him.
But he nodded.
“Yes.”
That afternoon, a judge signed the order.
Not one of Vivian’s friends.
Detective Kent made sure of that.
By evening, officers opened the Blackwood family crypt.
Arthur insisted on being there.
Emily stayed at the hospital with me and two officers.
She drew pictures on a notepad.
A yellow sweater.
A pancake.
A woman smiling.
Then she drew a watch.
I stared.
“Emily?”
She looked up.
“What is that?”
“Daddy’s watch.”
My heart kicked.
“You remember it?”
She nodded.
“Aunt Vivian took it from him in the basement.”
I sat very still.
“Your daddy was in the basement?”
Emily’s pencil stopped.
Her face went empty.
Not blank.
Protected.
Like her mind had shut a door.
I touched her hand.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
She whispered, “Daddy wasn’t dead when she put me in the wall.”
The hospital room spun.
I reached for my phone.
But before I could call Detective Kent, a code alarm blared in the hallway.
An officer shouted.
Then the door opened.
A nurse I had never seen before stepped inside.
May you like
She smiled at Emily.
“Time for your medicine.”
