Chapter 5: What Eleanor Did
I stood up.
I don't remember deciding to.
My body just did it.
"Eleanor told everyone I d*ed."
"Yes."
"The woman upstairs.
Who was just holding my hands."
"Yes."
I walked to the window.
Outside, a long gravel drive curved through bare trees.
Daniel's car was still there, a dark shape against the grey afternoon.
I stared at it because I needed something solid to look at.
"Why?" I said.
Edward didn't answer immediately.
"Why would she do that?" I turned around.
"She just told me she spent twenty years trying to find me.
She was trembling.
That was real.
I felt it."
"It was real," Edward said.
"All of it was real."
"Then explain it to me."
He looked at Daniel.
Daniel gave a short nod, as if releasing him from something.
"Twenty-three years ago," Edward began, "Eleanor became convinced that you were in danger.
Not from strangers.
From someone inside this house."
I waited.
"There was a man," he said.
"A business partner of mine.
He had been close to this family for years.
He was — trusted.
Completely trusted.
And then Eleanor found something.
A letter.
Addressed to him.
About you."
"What kind of letter?"
Edward's voice went flat and careful.
"The kind that made clear you were going to be used.
As leverage.
Against me.
Against a financial arrangement I had refused to enter." He paused.
"You were two years old.
You had no protection except the walls of this house.
And Eleanor decided those walls were no longer safe."
"So she told Thomas to take me."
"Yes."
"And told everyone else I d*ed."
"To make you disappear completely.
To make you worthless as leverage.
A living child could be found, threatened, taken.
A d*ad child was nothing to anyone."
The logic of it was cold and precise and it landed in my chest like ice water.
"She protected me by erasing me."
"Yes."
"And then she spent twenty years looking for me."
"The moment the threat was gone — the moment that man was no longer a danger — she wanted you back.
But Thomas had vanished completely.
He'd built a new life.
A new name.
He was protecting you the only way he knew how, which was to stay hidden."
Daniel spoke from the fireplace.
"She never told me any of this."
"No," Edward said.
"I grieved a sister for twenty-three years."
"I know."
"And you knew.
You knew she wasn't d*ad."
Edward looked at his son.
"I knew from the beginning.
Eleanor told me the night it happened.
I agreed to it.
I helped maintain it." He stopped.
"That is the part I carry."
The room was very quiet.
I sat back down.
Not because I was calm.
Because my legs had decided they'd had enough.
"The man," I said.
"The business partner.
Who was he?"
Edward and Daniel exchanged a look.
"His name was Gerald Marsh," Edward said.
"He was my partner for twelve years.
When Eleanor found the letter, I confronted him.
He denied it.
I dissolved the partnership.
He threatened legal action, then disappeared.
We heard nothing for years."
"And then?"
"And then, six months ago, he reappeared."
I looked up.
"He's been in contact with the estate," Daniel said, his voice careful now.
"Through a solicitor.
He's making a claim."
"What kind of claim?"
Daniel's hand dropped from the mantle.
"He says he has documentation proving that a significant portion of this estate was built using funds that were jointly his.
He wants half."
"And is it true?"
"No," Edward said.
"It is not true.
But the documentation he has is — convincing.
Enough to cause serious damage in court."
I looked at the key on the arm of my chair.
I had carried it in without thinking.
"What does any of this have to do with me?"
Neither of them answered right away.
Then Daniel said, quietly:
"His solicitor's letter arrived the same week Sophie found a reference to a woman named Nora Cross in Thomas's estate records.
The timing is—"
"You think he knows I'm alive."
Silence.
"You think he's always known."
Edward's face confirmed it before he spoke.
"We think the claim is not really about money," he said.
"We think it is about drawing you out.
Making you visible.
Making you findable."
The gravel outside crunched.
May you like
I turned to the window.
A second car had pulled into the drive.
