Chapter 5 - Not Supposed to Happen
Noah called the police.
Mom tried to leave before they arrived.
I locked the front door.
“What did you mean?”
She shook her head.
“I panicked.”
“You said this wasn’t supposed to happen tonight.”
“I meant any night.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
I knew that face.
It was the face she used when I was sixteen and caught her reading my journal.
The face that said the truth was technically somewhere in the room, but she planned to stand in front of it.
Noah checked the security app.
The cameras had gone offline at 7:42.
Two minutes before I walked into the kitchen.
Someone had entered using the side gate code.
A code only four people knew.
And Grant Keller, the family attorney.
Diane closed her eyes.
“Grant.”
She said nothing.
“Mom?”
“He was supposed to pick up documents.”
“What documents?”
“The ledger.”
My skin went cold.
“You arranged this?”
“No. Not like this. I told him I needed the ledger back before Noah copied it.”
Noah laughed in disbelief.
“You sent a man into our house while we were eating dinner?”
“I gave him the gate code weeks ago.”
I could barely look at her.
“Why?”
“Because the ledger belonged to your father.”
“It was in my house.”
“You don’t understand what’s in it.”
“Then explain.”
She looked toward the police lights arriving outside.
“I can’t.”
That was the moment something inside me changed.
I stopped needing her explanation to be kind.
The officers took statements.
They found shoe prints below the office window and a torn piece of gray fabric on the latch.
Grant did not answer his phone.
At 11:30, Noah’s cloud backup restored part of the missing audit folder.
One scanned page had been uploaded that afternoon.
It was a letter from my father to Grant.
GRANT,
IF DIANE CONTINUES USING CLAIRE’S NAME, I WILL TELL HER EVERYTHING.
I read the next line twice.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE COMPANY ANYMORE. IT IS ABOUT WHAT SHE DID WITH CLAIRE’S TRUST.
I looked at Mom.
“What trust?”
May you like
She stood perfectly still.
Noah whispered, “Claire… I didn’t know about this one.”
