Chapter 5 - The Cottage Beyond the Greenhouse
Elena met them on the back porch when they returned. She had managed the kitchens for fifteen years, and she had never once asked whether someone's last name belonged above or below hers on a paycheck. She wrapped towels around the children's shoulders and spoke to them as if they had always been expected.
Lucy didn't sit at first. “Are we allowed at this table?”
Elena pulled out a chair. “At this table, the rule is you wash your hands and tell me if you're allergic to cheese.”
Ben gave a shaky laugh. It was the first sound Adrian had heard from him that wasn't frightened.
Mateo watched them eat, one hand resting against the counter. His own daughter was away at college. When she was ten, he had spent two weeks sleeping in a hospital chair after a bicycle accident. The memory returned so sharply that he gripped the countertop to steady himself.
Adrian whispered, “You should have told me something was wrong here.”
Mateo looked at him. “I tried. Twice. Your assistant said all estate concerns went through Celeste.”
Adrian nodded. He couldn't even remember the assistant's name. Accountability, he realized, meant accepting the ugly facts without immediately offering a defense.
Adrian refused to let Lucy go to the cottage alone. Mateo drove them in the estate's old utility truck while two sheriff's deputies approached from the rear service road.
The greenhouse windows flashed in the afternoon sun. Behind them, the cottage door hung open.
“Ben?” Lucy shouted.
Adrian held her back. “Let the deputies check first.”
Inside, drawers had been pulled out, chairs overturned, and a plate of toast left untouched. A small backpack lay beneath the table. Lucy recognized it immediately.
“That's his. He wouldn't leave it.”
One deputy called from the back steps. They found Ben crouched behind stacked firewood, trembling but unharmed. He was nine years old and had been hiding from a stranger who demanded his mother's phone.
Lucy ran to him, dropping to her knees in the dirt. He clung to her and cried until he couldn't speak.
Adrian turned away to give them a moment. His own childhood had been full of expensive gifts and long empty hallways. His mother had always told him wealth didn't count for much if you couldn't make someone feel safe. He had remembered the words and forgotten the practice.
Deputy Harris took the children's statements. Adrian insisted that any further questioning wait for a child advocate. Mateo called his wife, Elena, and asked her to prepare the guest suite downstairs.
Ben wouldn't release the cracked phone. Eventually he handed it to Harris, but only after she promised to document who touched it.
“There's a video,” he whispered. “Mom made me promise not to watch it. I did anyway.”
“What does it show?” Adrian asked.
Ben glanced toward the house. “Your mom. She was yelling at Mrs. Vale.”
Harris bagged the phone as potential evidence. While she wrote the receipt, Adrian's mobile buzzed with a message from Celeste.
DON'T MAKE THIS PUBLIC. MARTIN HAS PAPERS THAT WILL COST YOU BLACKTHORN HALL.
May you like
A second message arrived before he could answer.
ASK NORA WHAT SHE SIGNED TEN YEARS AGO.
