Chapter 3 - The Five Chairs
Micah arrived before midnight with Leah and Winnie. Ruth met them on the porch and hugged her granddaughter so hard Winnie squeaked.
"Grandma, is Aunt Beth sick?" the girl asked.
"She's made some dangerous choices," Ruth said. "The grown-ups are sorting it out."
We settled Winnie in the guest room with a storybook. Then I showed Micah and Leah the recording. Micah watched the first part with his mouth pressed shut. When the stranger mentioned Sunday, he stood so quickly his chair scraped the floor.
"That's our family," he said. "She's handing us to a stranger."
"We don't know his name yet," I told him.
"I do." Leah pointed at the screen. "I saw him outside the school fundraiser. Beth introduced him as Simon's partner."
"Simon who?"
"Simon Kreel. He's trying to buy land along County Road Six. He offered us a commission if we'd persuade Ruth to sell. I told him we weren't interested."
Rosebridge wasn't a mansion. It was a weathered farmhouse on six acres, with a converted potting shed where Ruth ran free after-school art classes. Her grandparents had left it to her. We could have made a comfortable profit selling it, but Ruth wanted that place to remain open to the neighborhood kids.
"Beth said it was only paperwork," Micah muttered. "She told me Mom had already agreed."
"I never agreed," Ruth said.
Micah finally saw how Beth had given each of us a different version of the truth.
We called Deputy Doyle to report the identification. She advised us to stay together and arrange somewhere else to sleep. Micah booked rooms at a small inn across town while Leah packed snacks and Winnie's medication.
In the kitchen, Ruth stopped beside the refrigerator. A drawing Beth had made at age eleven was still attached with a faded magnet: our house, a crooked tree, three stick figures smiling under one enormous sun.
"She used to say this place was the first home that felt safe," Ruth whispered.
May you like
Outside, headlights washed across the curtains. A car stopped at the end of our drive without pulling in. I couldn't see the driver, but someone raised a phone toward the house.
Then the car slipped back onto the road, as if checking whether all five of us were still inside.
