CHAPTER 4
I stood up and moved the girls behind me.
“Stay here,” I said.
“Grandpa, don’t,” Lucy grabbed my arm. Her hand was ice cold. “If he knows we have the notebook—”
“He doesn’t know,” I said. But I was not sure.
I walked to the door. Through the frosted glass, I could see Arthur’s silhouette. He was alone. The white van was gone.
I unlocked the door but kept the chain in place.
Arthur stood on my porch, adjusting his cuffs. The smug expression was gone, replaced by something that almost looked like concern. Almost.
“Charles,” he said, smiling that politician’s smile that had always made my skin crawl. “I just wanted to check on the girls. Make sure they settled in okay.”
I did not open the chain. “They’re fine.”
His eyes flicked past me, trying to see inside. “Mind if I come in? We need to talk about... arrangements. School. Clothes. Expenses.”
“Expenses?” I could not keep the bitterness out of my voice. “You were ready to dump them on the state an hour ago. Now you’re worried about expenses?”
His smile tightened. “That was a moment of weakness, Charles. Grief does strange things to people. I’ve been thinking. Crystal and I... we’re willing to reconsider. Perhaps a joint arrangement. You keep them during the week. We take them on weekends. It would look better, you understand. For my reputation.”
There it was. Always his reputation. Always what looked best for Arthur.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said.
His voice dropped. The mask slipped for just a second. “Don’t make this difficult, Charles. You’re a retired librarian living on a pension. You can barely afford this house, let alone three growing girls. Think about it. If we fight in court... I have money. I have lawyers. What do you have?”
He leaned closer to the door.
“Rose is gone. The girls need stability. I can provide that. In exchange... I’m sure we can come to some kind of agreement about the house. And Rose’s things. She had jewelry, didn’t she? Family heirlooms. Those belong to the family. To me, as her husband.”
I understood then. He was not here for the girls. He was here for whatever Rose might have left behind. He was looking for something.
“The girls are my family,” I said. “And everything Rose had belongs to them. Not you.”
Arthur’s face hardened. The concerned father act vanished completely.
“Listen to me, you old fool,” he hissed. “You have no idea what you’re getting into. I’m not asking. I’m telling you. Tomorrow morning, my lawyer will be in touch. And unless you want to spend the next five years in court, losing every penny you have while those girls bounce from one foster home to another... you’ll do exactly what I say.”
He stepped back from the door.
“Think about it tonight, Charles. For the girls’ sake.”
He turned and walked to his car—a sleek black Mercedes that Rose had never wanted him to buy. He got in and drove away, tires crunching on the gravel.
I closed the door and slid the deadbolt home. My legs felt weak.
Lucy came out from behind the sofa. She had heard everything.
“He’s scared,” she said. “That’s why he came. He thinks Mom left something here. Something that can hurt him.”
I looked at the notebook in my hand. At the tablet in Rachel’s arms. At the closed bedroom door where April slept, carrying the final envelope in her backpack.
“He should be scared,” I said.
That night, after the younger girls were asleep, Lucy and I sat at the kitchen table. I made hot chocolate—Rose’s recipe, with extra marshmallows. Neither of us drank it.
We went through the notebook page by page.
The story it told was worse than anything I had imagined.
Arthur had not just been cheating. He had been systematically destroying Rose for over a year.
He had drained their joint bank accounts. He had convinced her to sign over her half of the house to him “for tax purposes.” He had isolated her from her friends—told lies about her, spread rumors that she was unstable, that she was drinking too much.
By the time Rose discovered the affair with Crystal, she had almost nothing left. No money. No friends who believed her. A husband who controlled every aspect of her life.
But she had started fighting back.
Secretly. Quietly. She had copied financial records. She had spoken to a lawyer friend who owed her a favor. She had started recording Arthur’s rages—his threats, his admissions of fraud, his plans to leave her penniless.
And then she had gotten sick.
The entries from the final month were terrifying.
Monday: Dizzy all day. Threw up after breakfast. Arthur made the oatmeal. Said it was “special organic stuff” from the health food store. He watched me eat every bite.
Wednesday: Doctor says my heart is “irregular.” Prescribes new medication. Arthur picked it up. He wouldn’t let me see the bottle. Said the pharmacist gave it to him already opened.
Friday: Chest pain so bad I thought I would die. Called 911. Arthur answered the phone. Told them I was having an anxiety attack. Made me hang up. Laughed afterward. Said I was being dramatic.
Sunday: I know what he’s doing. I’m not stupid. I just can’t prove it. Not yet. But I will. If I can just hold on long enough.
The last entry, the one I had read earlier, was written in a hand that trembled so badly some words were almost illegible.
Lucy was crying now. Silent tears rolling down her face. She had not cried at the funeral. She had not cried in the car. But reading her mother’s final words broke her.
“I should have done something,” she whispered. “I heard them fighting. I knew something was wrong. I just... I was scared.”
I pulled her into my arms. For the first time all day, she let herself be twelve years old again. She sobbed into my shoulder, her whole body shaking.
“You did everything right,” I told her. “Your mother trusted you. She gave you the most important thing she had. And you protected it. That takes more courage than most adults have.”
When she finally calmed down, she wiped her eyes and looked at me with that same steely determination I had seen at the cemetery.
“What do we do now, Grandpa?”
I looked at the notebook. At the tablet. At the closed door behind which April slept with the final secret.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “we go to the police. And we show them everything.”
Lucy shook her head. “Mom said not to. Not yet. She said Arthur has friends in the police department. That he would find a way to make the evidence disappear. She said we had to wait for the right moment.”
“When is the right moment?”
May you like
Lucy’s eyes were cold.
“Mom wrote it in the notebook. The wedding. Arthur and Crystal are getting married in three weeks. Mom said that’s when we strike. When everyone is watching. When he thinks he’s won. That’s when we destroy him.”
