Chapter 7 - The Thing Hidden Beneath the Floorboard
Daniel waited until the children were downstairs with Mrs. Collins—whom he had called back to the house in a voice so sharp she didn’t ask questions—before he went back into the bedroom.
Vanessa had been shut in the sitting room under the eye of the estate manager. She had finally started making threats.
“My lawyer will hear about this.”
“So will mine,” Daniel had replied.
Now he knelt by the closet and lifted the loose floorboard from the exact place shown in the video.
The velvet pouch was still there.
Inside was a small brass key.
And one folded note in childish handwriting.
Not Sophie’s.
Ethan’s.
It read:
Mom’s box. Don’t let Vanessa take it.
Daniel sat back on his heels.
Mom’s box.
For a dizzy second he thought Ethan meant his late wife had hidden something. But then he remembered an old cedar keepsake chest in the attic—one that held letters, baby bracelets, hospital cards, and other things from the children’s earliest years.
He went there immediately.
The brass key fit.
Inside the chest, beneath blankets and memory books, sat a locked metal cash box.
Daniel used the second tiny key tucked inside the pouch.
The lid opened.
Inside were copies of trust documents.
His original will.
A letter from his attorney.
And a sealed envelope labeled, in his own handwriting from six months earlier:
For Ethan and Sophie if anything happens to me.
His heart pounded.
There was also something else.
A second memory card.
This one in a little plastic case.
Daniel understood at once.
Someone had already been collecting proof before Ethan stumbled onto the first card.
Mrs. Collins, perhaps.
Or Ethan himself, with the crude but determined logic only frightened children develop.
He inserted the second card.
The first clip began with Ethan’s face close to the camera, whispering.
“If she’s mean again, it’s gonna save it.”
He had hidden a cheap motion camera in the room.
Daniel pressed a hand over his mouth.
His son had been building evidence because he did not believe adults would protect him in time.
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That realization hurt worse than anything he had seen on the screen.
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