Chapter 4 - The Mother's Alibi.
Margaret did not shout at Rebecca.
That would have been easier.
She simply looked at her daughter with the cold disappointment she had used for decades to make obedience feel like survival.
"Be very careful what you suggest."
Rebecca lowered her eyes.
Claire recognized the movement immediately.
She had spent twelve years making the same one.
Detective Cole asked Margaret where she had been between five and six that evening.
"In this house."
"Your daughter says otherwise."
"My daughter is emotional."
Rebecca's chair scraped as she stood again.
"Stop saying that whenever a woman tells the truth."
The words stunned even Rebecca herself.
Margaret turned away as if she had not heard them.
Ortiz requested Margaret's phone.
Margaret refused.
Cole explained they could seek a warrant.
Daniel stepped forward.
"You are not taking my mother's phone over some burned garbage."
Claire looked at him.
"Why are you defending her if you think she destroyed the box you wanted hidden?"
He did not answer.
Claire suddenly understood that Daniel's loyalty to Margaret was not affection.
It was dependence.
He had spent his whole life fearing the person who financed his mistakes.
Margaret removed her phone and placed it on the table.
"I called my attorney."
Ortiz glanced at the screen.
"For forty minutes?"
"He bills by the hour."
The attempt at humor died immediately.
Cole asked for the attorney's name.
Margaret gave it.
Ortiz stepped into the foyer to verify the call.
Daniel walked toward Claire.
"You think this makes you brave?"
Claire did not step back.
"No."
"I think standing up was brave."
He lowered his voice.
"You are going to lose this house."
"Then I lose the house."
"You will lose every friend you have."
Claire looked around at the guests still pretending not to listen.
"Then I lose people who watched you pull my hair over a broken dish."
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"And when they charge you too?"
That landed.
He saw it land and smiled.
"There she is."
His voice softened.
"The real Claire."
"Still afraid."
Claire hated that he was right about one thing.
She was afraid.
She was afraid of being blamed for believing him.
She was afraid the forged signatures would look real.
She was afraid the three forms she had actually signed would be enough to destroy everything she said afterward.
Margaret approached them.
"Come upstairs with me, Claire."
Claire almost laughed.
"Why?"
"Because this can still be fixed."
Daniel looked at his mother sharply.
"What can be fixed?"
Margaret ignored him.
"Five minutes."
Claire looked toward Cole.
The detective was speaking with an officer.
Ortiz was still in the foyer.
Claire should have refused.
Instead she followed Margaret halfway up the staircase because some part of her still needed to know what the older woman believed she controlled.
Margaret stopped on the landing beneath a framed photograph of the Bennett family from happier years.
"Daniel is weak," she whispered.
Claire stared at her.
"You know that."
"I know he's dangerous when he thinks he's losing."
Margaret's face was pale now.
"The box did not only contain foundation records."
Claire said nothing.
"There was a letter."
"From whom?"
Margaret looked down toward Daniel.
"His father."
Daniel's father, Richard Bennett, had died six years earlier after falling from the terrace at the lake house.
The death had been ruled an accident.
Margaret gripped the banister.
"Richard wrote that letter three days before he died."
Claire felt the air leave her lungs.
"What did it say?"
Margaret's eyes filled with something Claire had never seen before.
Not grief.
May you like
Terror.
"It said Daniel was with him the night he fell."
