Chapter 5 - The Recording
Ethan pressed stop.
Nobody spoke.
The tiny recorder sat in his palm like a live insect.
Claire wanted to throw it through the window.
Instead, she asked, “How long has that been here?”
Lauren checked the side.
“There’s a memory card.”
Margaret reached for it.
“Give me that.”
Ethan closed his fist.
“No.”
His voice was different now.
Flat.
Claire had heard him angry before.
She had rarely heard him finished.
They took the recorder downstairs.
Richard restored the dining room lights fully and locked the front door.
The rest of the family left after Ethan told them dinner was over.
Nobody argued.
Margaret remained near the fireplace with her arms folded.
Her cream blouse was spotless.
She looked almost regal.
Claire hated that part of her still felt like a child in trouble under that stare.
Lauren inserted the memory card into a laptop.
Folders appeared.
Dates going back almost two years.
Ethan clicked one.
Claire heard herself.
Her own voice.
Inside her own kitchen.
“I can’t keep living like this.”
Then Ethan’s voice.
“Please don’t make me choose between you and my mother.”
Claire closed her eyes.
That conversation had happened at home.
Ten miles away.
Not in this house.
Ethan went still.
Lauren whispered, “Oh my God.”
They opened another file.
Margaret’s voice filled the room.
“Move the transfer before Christmas. If Claire finds the ledger, I want her to look unstable when she accuses me.”
Richard’s face collapsed.
Margaret stared at the fire.
The recording continued.
A man’s voice answered.
“What if Ethan notices?”
“He won’t. He never notices until someone tells him where to look.”
Claire looked at her husband.
The words were cruel.
The worst part was that they were almost true.
Ethan swallowed hard.
“Who is that man?”
Richard shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Lauren replayed it.
Claire recognized something in the background.
A faint bell.
Three notes.
Then a train horn.
“That’s not here,” she said.
Ethan frowned.
“What?”
“My office is near the Union Station clock. It rings like that every hour.”
She leaned closer.
“And there’s a freight line two blocks away.”
Lauren searched the file properties.
“Recorded Tuesday at 3:12 p.m.”
Claire’s mind raced.
Tuesday at 3:12, Margaret had told the family group chat she was at a charity luncheon downtown.
Ethan looked at Claire.
“She met someone near your office.”
Another file sat below it.
Created today.
6:42 p.m.
Eleven minutes before Claire and Ethan arrived for dinner.
Lauren clicked play.
Margaret’s voice whispered, “The key is missing. If she has it, we move everything tonight.”
A man answered.
“I already moved the original.”
“Where?”
A pause.
Then he said one sentence.
“The safe deposit box under Ethan’s name.”
May you like
Ethan stared at the laptop.
“I don’t have a safe deposit box.”
