Chapter 3 - The Missing Folder
The mansion fell into darkness.
Emily heard Margaret gasp.
Daniel immediately pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight.
“Stay here.”
“No.”
Emily followed him.
Daniel looked back.
“This could be nothing.”
“Vanessa just framed me, ran upstairs after hearing my mother’s name, and now the electricity is gone.”
Emily held his stare.
“This is not nothing.”
They reached Margaret’s study.
The door was open.
A faint emergency light glowed from the hallway.
Daniel entered first.
A desk drawer had been pulled out.
Papers covered the floor.
Margaret arrived behind them.
Her face changed the moment she saw the open drawer.
“No.”
She rushed toward the desk.
Daniel grabbed her shoulder.
“What was inside?”
Margaret searched through the papers.
“A file.”
“What file?”
“Your father’s private correspondence.”
Emily felt a chill.
“About my mother?”
Margaret looked at her.
“Yes.”
Footsteps sounded somewhere above them.
Daniel ran toward the hall.
The main staircase was empty.
Then came the sound of a car engine outside.
They rushed to the window.
Vanessa’s black Mercedes tore down the driveway.
Daniel immediately called her.
No answer.
He called again.
Straight to voicemail.
Margaret sat in the desk chair.
“I should have destroyed that file years ago.”
Emily stared at her.
“Maybe that’s exactly what Vanessa plans to do.”
Daniel looked at Margaret.
“What was in it?”
Margaret’s hands trembled.
“Letters from Laura.”
Emily stopped breathing for a moment.
“My mother wrote to you?”
“Many times.”
“You never answered?”
“I answered the first two.”
“What did she say?”
Margaret looked toward Emily.
“She said she had proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That she had been framed.”
Emily felt anger rising again.
“By whom?”
Margaret hesitated.
“Victor Hale.”
Daniel froze.
Vanessa’s father.
The name hung between them.
Victor Hale had been dead for eight years.
Emily knew him only from photographs displayed throughout the mansion.
He had been Richard Hawthorne’s business partner.
He had also been treated like family.
Daniel whispered.
“You think Vanessa knows her father stole the money?”
Margaret shook her head.
“I don’t know what she knows.”
Emily stared at the empty drawer.
“What happened to my mother’s proof?”
“She said she hid it somewhere safe.”
“Where?”
Margaret looked away.
“She never told me.”
Daniel walked toward the shattered picture frame on the floor.
He picked up an old photograph.
Victor Hale stood beside Richard Hawthorne.
Margaret stood between them.
Laura Parker was visible in the background.
Emily walked closer.
Her mother looked young.
Alive.
Smiling.
Then Emily noticed something handwritten across the bottom corner.
May you like
Three words.
Behind the winter garden.
