Chapter 18 - THE LAKE HOUSE
The drive to the lake house took forty minutes and shaved ten years off my nerves.
Investigators peeled one direction to watch for Richard. Nina drove. I sat in the back because my lower back had become a living argument against every bump in the road. Margaret stayed on speaker the entire way, equal parts strategist and guardrail, reminding me to breathe, drink water, and stop clenching my jaw.
The lake house looked less like a retreat than a storage vault in disguise—long, low, expensive, and emotionally empty.
Kelsey’s code opened the side door.
Inside, the air smelled like cedar, dust, and disuse. We moved straight to the workshop off the garage. Behind the workbench, as promised, a steel floor safe sat half hidden by plastic bins and fishing gear.
Nina crouched and entered the code from Kelsey’s note.
The safe opened.
Inside was the black lockbox from my bedroom.
For one impossible second I could only stare.
Then Nina lifted it out and set it on the bench while the investigator photographed everything in place. The box contained the original deed to my house, Daniel’s insurance records, a packet on the Old Mill parcel, copies of the forged power of attorney, and—wrapped in a mechanic’s rag—an envelope marked Service.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Inside was a printed photo.
Richard stood in the service bay beside the dark loaner SUV, tool case open, one gloved hand near the front wheel assembly. The timestamp placed it hours before Daniel’s crash.
Kelsey had not lied about the photo.
There was also a memory card.
Sam, who had come with us for digital handling, slid it into a reader. The card contained three images and one short voice memo. Kelsey’s breathless whisper filled the room.
“Richard’s in the bay with Daniel’s loaner. He told me to get out. I’m recording this in case he tries to say I imagined it.”
No direct confession. No cinematic thunderclap. Just fear preserved in a voice too young and too late.
It was enough to make the room go silent.
Then my phone rang.
My doctor.
I answered, already uneasy.
“Emily, are you having contractions again?”
As if in response, one hit low and hard, radiating around my spine so sharply I gripped the bench edge.
Nina’s head snapped up. “What is it?”
The doctor heard my breath change and told me to sit immediately.
By the time I lowered myself onto a stool, a second contraction rolled through. Not as close as active labor, not yet, but my body was done being treated like a side note in a crime file.
“We need to go,” Nina said.
I hated her for being right.
On the way out, the investigator stopped in the doorway and pointed toward the gravel.
Fresh tire tracks.
Not ours.
Richard had either been there recently or was close enough to matter.
We loaded the evidence and left fast.
Halfway back to Columbus, Kelsey called from a burner phone, voice shredded by panic. “He knows about the house,” she said. “He’s asking where I put the card. He said if I talk, he’ll burn what’s left.”
“What’s left of what?” I demanded.
She went silent for one beat too long.
“Your mother’s original estate box,” she whispered. “He kept it with the rest.”
Then the line died.
I sat there with a hand over my belly, another over the recovered deed, and realized the next fight was no longer about discovering the center of the truth.
May you like
It was about whether we could secure the rest before Richard destroyed it.
📖 We found the lockbox, the photo, and the deed—but the moment proof landed in my hands, my body faltered and Kelsey warned me my father might burn what remained. 👇
