Chapter 8 - Aunt Vivian's Truth
I found Vivian sitting alone in the chapel parking lot. The police had questioned her and released her while they checked the evidence. She hadn't gone home.
Her eyes fell on my sister's blood, still dried beneath my nails.
“You wrapped those ties around her wrists,” I said.
Vivian started crying. I hated her for how quickly the tears came.
“He said she was only going to sleep. That he'd move her somewhere safe until the documents disappeared.”
“You watched them put her in a coffin.”
“I tried to stop it.”
“You could have opened it.”
She flinched. “Yes.”
That one word mattered more than all her excuses.
Vivian said Dad had faked his death after the mill fire, paid Owen Pike to identify another man's remains, and built a new life as Martin Voss. She had signed the false identification herself.
“Why?” I demanded.
“First for money. Then because he knew what I'd done.” She pulled out a photograph of her son, Evan, standing outside his apartment. “He sent this yesterday. Said Evan would be next.”
“Your choices put Elise in that box.”
“I know.”
Vivian gave me a gate code for the greenhouse. She said Voss owned the property through another company and used it as a meeting place. I called Mara and read her the code. Then I asked Vivian something that had bothered me since childhood.
“Whose body did we bury?”
She stared at the chapel roof.
“Samuel Reed. The night guard at the mill. He found the money Daniel stole.”
I felt sick. “Did Dad kill him?”
“I heard them fighting before the fire. When the building went up, Samuel never came out.”
Vivian looked at my phone and gripped my wrist.
“Don't go through the greenhouse's front entrance. Daniel keeps a second lock on the inside.”
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From across the parking lot, a car horn sounded once. Vivian's expression collapsed.
“He knows I told you.”
