Chapter 9 - Claire Dawson Wasn’t a Stranger
Robert dropped the lighter.
The truth came slowly.
The body buried under Catherine’s name belonged to another young woman.
Emily Vale.
Thomas’s sister.
She had died that same night in a car accident after trying to deliver Catherine’s evidence.
Grant’s father used the confusion to switch identities.
Robert discovered it.
And remained silent.
Not because he killed anyone.
Because admitting the switch would expose his destruction of evidence.
His career had been built partly upon a cowardly decision made at twenty-nine.
Lauren listened without interrupting.
When he finished, she said, “You protected me by teaching me a lie.”
Robert cried.
“Yes.”
Police arrested him for evidence tampering and obstruction pending investigation.
He did not resist.
The vault records implicated several deceased businessmen and two living former officials.
The immediate danger was over.
Or so we thought.
At dawn, Claire and I sat on Hawthorne’s front steps.
She had not slept.
Neither had I.
“My sister is alive,” she said.
“Yes.”
“My Saturday was supposed to involve returning a ring to a cheating dentist.”
“Your ex is a dentist?”
“Orthodontist.”
“That explains everything.”
She laughed.
Then rested her head on my shoulder.
“Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“Why me?”
“What?”
“Your lie.”
I thought about it.
“Because you sat down.”
“That’s profound.”
“I had spent two years keeping an empty chair beside me.”
She lifted her head.
“Metaphorically?”
“Mostly.”
“And I ruined it?”
“You asked permission first.”
She smiled.
Then became serious.
“I knew who you were before I sat down.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
She reached into her clutch.
Another photograph.
This one showed me.
I was leaving my restoration shop.
Taken three weeks earlier.
“Claire.”
“Catherine sent it.”
“Why?”
“She had been investigating everyone connected to Lauren.”
“Why me?”
“Because Robert visited you.”
I remembered.
Three weeks earlier, Robert had stopped by my shop claiming he wanted an antique desk repaired.
“He never brought the desk.”
“No.”
“What did he want?”
“To make sure you attended the wedding.”
I stood.
The invitation.
The handwritten name.
No guest.
Table Twelve.
The watch.
The key.
Robert had orchestrated it.
“Why?”
Claire handed me another page.
My name appeared in the old Hawthorne records.
Daniel Mercer.
But the date was seventeen years earlier.
I had been nineteen.
I had never visited Hawthorne.
Then I saw the signature beneath mine.
My father’s.
Samuel Mercer.
My father had died when I was twenty-three.
He had been a carpenter.
Or that was what I believed.
Catherine approached from behind us.
“Your father renovated Hawthorne’s west wing.”
I stared at her.
“He built the hidden vault compartments.”
Claire touched my arm.
Catherine continued.
“And he gave me the only copy of something Grant’s father wanted destroyed.”
“What?”
“A recording.”
“Where?”
She looked at the watch in my hand.
“Samuel said his son would know where to find it.”
I thought of my father’s workshop.
Closed for twelve years.
The building I now used as storage.
We drove there.
At the back stood his old workbench.
I found a tiny hawthorn symbol carved underneath.
A hidden drawer opened.
Inside was a cassette tape.
And a letter.
SON,
IF YOU ARE HEARING THIS, I FAILED TO TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR MOTHER.
My hands began shaking.
Claire stood beside me.
I turned the page.
Before I could read the next sentence, someone knocked from inside the locked storage room.
Three slow knocks.
May you like
Then a woman whispered:
“Daniel? I’ve been waiting twelve years for you to open that drawer.”
