Chapter 5 - THE SECOND DEATH CERTIFICATE
Claire did not react the way Ethan expected.
When he told her about the invoice, she whispered:
“I remember my father.”
Ethan leaned forward.
They were sitting in the library.
“What do you remember?”
“After the funeral.”
“Whose funeral?”
“My parents’.”
That made no sense.
Claire had always said both parents died together.
She closed her eyes.
“I thought it was a dream.”
A memory.
A five-year-old girl waking at night.
Someone sitting beside her bed.
A man.
His hand covering her mouth gently.
Not to hurt her.
To keep her quiet.
Her father.
Thomas Bennett had whispered:
“Don’t trust Aunt Vivian.”
Then he had given Claire something.
A small brass key.
“Do you still have it?”
Claire nodded.
Everyone stared.
“Where?”
“In the room.”
They returned to the east wing.
Claire went directly to the iron bed.
She knelt.
Reached underneath the frame.
And pulled loose a section of fabric.
Inside was a brass key.
She had kept it for twenty years.
Grant stared at it.
“I’ve seen that kind before.”
“Where?”
“The old bank boxes.”
The answer came from Melissa.
Everyone turned.
Grant’s wife stood in the doorway.
She had been almost invisible since Claire was discovered.
Quiet.
Shocked.
Supportive.
Now her face was tense.
“My grandfather had one,” Melissa said. “Old private safe-deposit keys looked like that.”
Grant frowned.
“How would you know?”
“My family owned a regional bank.”
Claire stared at Melissa.
Then frowned.
“You.”
Melissa froze.
Claire stepped closer.
“I know your voice.”
Grant looked between them.
“What?”
Melissa shook her head.
“That’s impossible.”
Claire’s face hardened.
“No.”
She closed her eyes.
“You used to read.”
The room went silent.
“When?”
Ethan asked.
“Outside the wall.”
Claire pointed toward the old ventilation grate.
“Someone used to sit on the other side when I was younger and read books aloud.”
Melissa had gone pale.
Grant stared at his wife.
“Melissa?”
She began crying.
“I was fourteen.”
Grant looked stunned.
Melissa’s father had done business with Vivian.
As a teenager, Melissa sometimes stayed at Ashford Manor.
One afternoon she heard a child crying inside the wall.
Vivian caught her investigating.
“She told me Claire was terminally ill,” Melissa whispered.
Claire stared at her.
“She said you were contagious. That your parents had hidden your condition because they were ashamed.”
“So you read to me.”
Melissa nodded.
“For almost a year.”
“Then you stopped.”
Melissa wiped her face.
“My father found out.”
“What happened?”
“He forbade me from coming back.”
Ethan watched her carefully.
“And twenty years later you married Grant Ashford?”
Melissa looked at him.
“That wasn’t an accident.”
Grant turned.
“What does that mean?”
“I married you because of Claire.”
The room seemed to contract.
Melissa had never believed Vivian’s story.
As an adult, she began investigating.
She eventually discovered Claire Bennett had legally died without recovered remains.
Then she learned about the trust.
Getting close to the Ashfords became the only way she could continue searching without alerting Vivian.
Grant stared at the woman he had married.
“How much of our marriage was an investigation?”
Melissa’s answer hurt more because it was quiet.
“At first?”
She swallowed.
“All of it.”
Grant looked away.
“At first,” she repeated.
There was no time to resolve what came after.
Rachel entered carrying documents.
She had found something stranger.
Thomas Bennett had two death certificates.
The first said he died in an automobile accident with Elizabeth.
The second was filed six weeks later under a corrected case number.
Different physician.
Different time of death.
Different county.
Ethan compared them.
One man.
Two legal deaths.
Rachel placed another document beside them.
“And there’s more.”
Thomas Bennett had rented a safe-deposit box in Manhattan.
The lease had never been terminated.
The key number matched the brass key Claire had hidden for twenty years.
Claire stared at it.
“What’s inside?”
May you like
Ethan stood.
“Whatever your father thought was worth coming back from the dead to hide.”
