key. Then one hand tightened around the umbrella handle until her knuckles whitened.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
I walked along the gate to the narrow pedestrian entrance half-hidden by ivy. My father had shown me that lock when I was eleven.
“Never rely on the grand entrance,” he had told me, pressing oil into the mechanism with a rag. “Old houses survive because they have quiet ways in.”
The brass key slid into place.
It turned.
The gate opened with a low groan.
Vivienne stepped toward me. “You are trespassing.”
“No,” I said, walking past her. “I’m early.”
The two men stopped measuring. The woman in the camel coat watched us with growing uncertainty.
Vivienne hurried after me, her heels striking the wet gravel. “This performance will not change anything. The sale is complete.”
“Then you won’t mind if I collect something from the music room.”
Her breath caught behind me.
It was small. Almost nothing.
But I heard it.
Inside, Grayhaven smelled wrong.
Not empty. Not yet. But disturbed. A stack of cardboard boxes stood in the entrance hall. My mother’s mirror had been taken down from the wall and leaned face-first against a crate. Someone had taped paper over the chandelier. Mud from strangers’ boots marked the marble.
I had imagined grief would be loud when I returned.
Instead, it was quiet. It stood in every doorway, waiting for me.
I headed for the music room.
Vivienne followed close enough that I could smell her perfume.
“You are making a mistake,” she hissed.
“Probably not my first.”
“Your father was confused at the end. You know that.”
I stopped with my hand on the music room door.
The hallway seemed to narrow around us.
She had said it too quickly.
Too rehearsed.
I turned. “Why would you say that?”
Her eyes flickered. “Because grief makes people sentimental. You are about to cling to some imagined message from a dying man who barely knew what day it was.”
Behind her, the woman in the camel coat had stepped into the hall. The two men lingered behind her.
They heard every word.
Vivienne realized that a second too late.
I opened the doors.
The music room was gray with storm light. The old grand piano stood near the windows, black lacquer dulled with dust. The portrait of my mother had been taken down from above the mantel and set against the wall. Its absence felt like an insult.
The piano bench was slightly crooked.
My stomach tightened.
I crossed the rug.
Vivienne’s voice dropped. “Leave it alone.”
I lifted the lid of the bench.
The blue velvet lining had been torn.
The hidden pocket was empty.
For one suspended heartbeat, the room tilted.
Had she found it? Had she found everything? Had my father trusted me with a path already destroyed?
Vivienne exhaled behind me, almost a laugh.
Then a voice spoke from the doorway.
“Looking for this?”
Edmund Rowe stood in the hall wearing a dark raincoat, his silver hair damp at the temples. In one hand, he held the second brass key on its red string. Beside him stood a woman in a navy coat with a detective’s badge clipped to her belt.
Vivienne went completely still.
Mr. Rowe looked from her to the buyers.
