Chapter 6 - THE COTTAGE
By noon, my house contained a lawyer, a process server’s papers, one furious mother-in-law, one cheating husband, and the brother of a dead woman.
Not exactly the birthday brunch I had imagined.
Rachel arrived in person.
She was forty-five, calm, and absolutely unimpressed by expensive men raising their voices.
She took one look at Andrew and said, “Do not touch, destroy, transfer, or alter any jointly held asset.”
Andrew laughed.
“You don’t represent me.”
“Correct.”
He stopped laughing.
Rachel reviewed the lender claim.
“This guarantee is sloppy.”
“Meaning?”
“The signature resembles yours, but the notary block is suspicious.”
Andrew interrupted.
“Marcus arranged it.”
Rachel looked at him.
“You keep saying that as though it improves your situation.”
Daniel asked, “What about the cottage?”
Rachel looked at me.
“Claire owns it separately?”
“Yes.”
“Then no one goes there alone until we know what’s inside.”
Andrew suddenly said, “That’s ridiculous.”
Every person in the room turned toward him.
I felt a chill.
“What’s at the cottage?”
“Nothing.”
“You just reacted like something is.”
He grabbed his keys.
“I’m leaving.”
Daniel stepped into the doorway.
Andrew shoved him.
Daniel shoved back.
Lorraine screamed.
I moved between them.
“Enough!”
Andrew pointed at Daniel.
“Get this lunatic out.”
I looked at my husband.
“No. You leave.”
His face changed.
“You’re throwing me out of my own house?”
“I’m asking you to stay somewhere else until my lawyer sorts out whether you tried to mortgage it using a forged signature.”
Lorraine shrieked, “Then I’m going with him.”
“Good.”
She stared at me.
“You think you won.”
“No.”
I picked up the cast-iron pot from where I had set it beside the stairs.
“I think I finally started.”
An hour later, Andrew and Lorraine left.
Rachel insisted we change the locks after confirming Andrew had taken clothes and medication.
Daniel remained.
“I need to show you something else.”
We drove to Canandaigua Lake in separate cars.
The cottage sat quiet beneath a gray sky.
My grandfather had bought the land when I was twelve.
I had spent summers there learning to swim.
Andrew had turned it into a place I now associated with betrayal.
Inside, everything looked normal.
Too normal.
Daniel went directly to the bedroom.
“My sister said there was a vent.”
“A vent?”
“She hid something.”
We searched for twenty minutes.
Then I noticed one floorboard beneath the dresser had fresh scratches.
I pried it up.
Underneath was a waterproof envelope.
Inside were photocopies of loan documents.
A handwritten ledger.
And a small digital recorder.
I pressed play.
Marcus’s voice came first.
“You should’ve kept your mouth shut.”
Natalie answered, “Claire deserves to know.”
Andrew said, “Nat, calm down.”
Then Lorraine.
“You are not destroying my son over money.”
There was a crash.
Natalie cried out.
The recording became muffled.
Then Marcus said something that made every hair on my arms rise.
“Take her keys.”
The recording ended.
Daniel looked at me.
“She crashed less than an hour later.”
A car door slammed outside.
May you like
We both froze.
Someone had followed us to the cottage.
