I stared at the document.
“Why would Margaret make me the beneficiary?”
Harrison didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he opened another file.
“This was changed six months ago.”
I read the date.
The exact week Margaret had suddenly become afraid of being left alone with Derek.
I remembered it now.
She had once grabbed my wrist and whispered, “Don’t let him take the house.”
At the time, I thought she was confused.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
Harrison placed another document beside the insurance policy.
It was a financial statement.
Large transfers had been made from Margaret’s accounts.
Thousands of dollars at a time.
All eventually leading to the same company.
A company I had never heard of.
“Who owns it?” I asked.
Harrison looked at me.
“Derek.”
My stomach dropped.
“Why would Margaret give me the insurance money if Derek owned the company?”
“Because she believed he was hiding something from you.”
I looked through the photographs in the box.
The first showed Derek standing outside a luxury resort.
The second showed the same blonde woman I’d heard laughing in the background of his phone call.
The third photograph made my hands go cold.
It showed Margaret sitting across from that woman.
On the back, Margaret had written:
“She knows what Derek did.”
I looked up.
“Who is she?”
Harrison slid another photograph across the desk.
“This was taken three weeks ago.”
It showed Derek and the woman entering a bank.
Behind them was a man I recognized.
Derek’s uncle Arthur.
The same man who had accused me at Margaret’s memorial of failing her.
I suddenly understood why everyone had been so eager to blame me.
They wanted me distracted.
They wanted me to feel guilty.
They wanted me to leave before I discovered the truth.
Then my phone rang.
It was Chloe.
“Don’t go home,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“I found something in Mom’s room.”
“What?”
“I found a second key.”
I looked down at the silver key in my hand.
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a pause.
Then Chloe whispered:
“Elena… someone is inside Mom’s old house.”
My blood ran cold.
“Call the police.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because the person inside has a key.”
The call suddenly ended.
I looked at Harrison.
He was already standing.
“Take the documents,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To the house.”
Twenty minutes later, we arrived.
The front door was slightly open.
Inside, the house was silent.
Margaret’s favorite chair was still beside the window.
Her photographs were still on the walls.
But the wooden box was gone.
Someone had broken into the study.
I stepped toward the desk.
A single sheet of paper had been left behind.
My name was written across it.
I picked it up.
There were only seven words:
“You should have left when he asked.”
Harrison looked at me.
“Who is ‘he’?”
Before I could answer, a floorboard creaked upstairs.
Someone was still inside.
Then Derek’s voice came from the hallway above us.
“Elena…”
I froze.
He slowly appeared at the top of the stairs.
He wasn’t alone.
The blonde woman stood beside him.
And in her hand was Margaret’s missing wooden box.
Derek looked at me and smiled.
“You weren’t supposed to find that.”
I tightened my grip around the silver key.
“Then maybe you should have been honest.”
His smile disappeared.
Because for the first time, Derek realized something.
I wasn’t the helpless wife he’d expected to control.
And Margaret had left me exactly what I needed to bring the truth into the light.
To be continued…
