PART 3
I looked at the brass key.
The tag said 412.
My mother had known I might need it.
But how?
Had she truly expected Richard to betray me?
Or had she simply recognized something in him that I was too emotionally invested to see?
I unfolded the rest of the letter.
There was another paragraph written on the back.
Miranda,
There is one thing I did not tell you when I was alive because I wanted you to have the chance to discover the truth about your marriage without becoming afraid of your own shadow.
Some of his money comes from legitimate contracts.
Some does not.
Years ago, he asked me whether I would be willing to sell this property to one of his companies. I refused. He became angry enough that I stopped allowing him inside the house.
He told me you would eventually convince me.
I told him you were not for sale.
He laughed.
I never forgot that laugh.
Neither should you.
My breath caught.
Richard had never mentioned that conversation.
Not once.
He had always claimed he hated this place because it was “falling apart.”
But according to my mother, he had tried to buy it.
Why?
I looked around the hallway.
The peeling walls.
The old floors.
The crooked doorframes.
There was nothing obviously valuable.
Unless there was.
I picked up the flash drive.
A handwritten label was stuck across it.
M. VANCE — 2019–2024
Five years.
Five years of something.
I suddenly felt cold.
My mother had died two years earlier.
Richard had spent the last eighteen months of our marriage destroying me.
Which meant Mom had gathered at least some of this before she died.
I took the flash drive to the kitchen.
My laptop was old, but it still worked.
I inserted the drive.
A single folder appeared.
FOR MIRANDA ONLY
Inside were twelve folders.
Dates.
Names.
Company numbers.
Bank records.
Property records.
Photographs.
Emails.
I clicked the first folder.
The first document was a property survey of my mother’s land.
I recognized the house.
Then I saw the acreage.
I had always thought Mom owned approximately eighteen acres.
The document said forty-seven.
I stared.
Forty-seven acres.
I opened another file.
Timber valuation.
My stomach tightened.
