Chapter 2 - WHAT NERIAH SAW
Neriah had bruising across one shoulder.
Nothing broken.
No head injury.
No breathing difficulty.
No damage to her neck.
The pediatric emergency physician repeated those facts until I finally believed them.
Then he looked at me.
“Your daughter is frightened.”
I knew.
She had not let go of the stuffed puppy after a police officer retrieved it from the living-room floor.
She held it beneath her chin while a child-protection social worker named Dr. Maya Chen sat several feet away.
No interrogation.
No father feeding answers.
Maya asked simple questions.
“What happened before Daddy came home?”
Neriah looked at me.
Maya gently said:
“You can look at Daddy. You can answer me.”
Neriah nodded.
“Grandma was in Mommy’s room.”
Eliana’s room.
I had never called it that.
It was the small study Eliana used before she died.
Prisca had wanted it converted into a sitting room.
I refused.
“What was Grandma doing?”
“She moved the picture.”
“What picture?”
“The trees.”
I knew it.
A framed landscape Eliana bought at an art fair.
“What happened when she moved it?”
“There was a little door.”
My pulse changed.
I had lived in that house for eleven years.
I knew of no little door.
“What did Grandma do?”
“She opened it.”
“With the brass key?”
Neriah nodded.
“What was inside?”
“Papers.”
“What kind?”
She shrugged.
“Red ones. White ones. Mommy’s green book.”
Green book.
Eliana had kept leather-bound notebooks.
Most went missing after her death.
I assumed grief had made me forget where we stored them.
Maya continued.
“Did Grandma see you?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do?”
“She said go upstairs.”
“Did you?”
“I hid.”
“Where?”
“Behind the big chair.”
“What happened next?”
Neriah squeezed the puppy.
“Grandma called somebody.”
“What did she say?”
“She said Daddy still doesn’t know.”
My throat tightened.
“Anything else?”
Neriah’s voice dropped.
“She said they have to finish before I’m seven.”
I looked at Maya.
My daughter’s seventh birthday was four months away.
“What had to be finished?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Grandma take anything?”
Neriah nodded.
“The red papers.”
“And the key?”
“She dropped it.”
“You picked it up?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Neriah started crying.
“Because it said Mommy.”
That sentence broke me.
Later, police photographed the brass key.
Detective Mara Ellis asked me about Eliana.
How did she die?
Car accident.
Three years earlier.
A driver crossed a median during heavy rain.
Police investigated.
No suspicious circumstances.
No Sutton conspiracy.
No mystery death.
I needed that fact anchored firmly before grief tried to turn everything into something darker.
“Did your wife leave an estate?” Mara asked.
“Yes.”
“Large?”
“Moderate.”
Eliana owned shares in her architecture practice, personal investments, and some inherited Sutton-related assets.”
“Sutton-related through you?”
“No.”
That answer sounded strange even to me.
Eliana’s grandmother had once invested alongside my grandfather.
There were old family financial connections.
I never understood them.
My mother handled most family administration.
Mara looked at me.
“Your mother handled your late wife’s paperwork?”
“Some.”
“Why?”
I did not have a good answer.
That frightened me.
The next morning my attorney, Naomi Price, entered with a photograph of the key.
“I found the manufacturer.”
“What does it open?”
“Not a residential lock.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“This is an old dual-control document-vault key.”
“Where?”
“I’m still tracing the serial pattern.”
Then she turned her laptop.
An email from Prisca’s attorney had arrived twenty minutes earlier.
RETURN PROPERTY BELONGING TO PRISCA SUTTON IMMEDIATELY.
Naomi smiled without humor.
“She’s claiming ownership already.”
“Can she?”
“Maybe.”
“Even with Eliana’s initials?”
“That’s why we verify.”
Then my phone vibrated.
A text from Prisca.
Only one sentence.
Ask Neriah where she found the second key.
I read it twice.
The second key.
I looked at Naomi.
May you like
She looked at me.
Neither of us had known there was a first.
