Chapter 6 - What Vanessa Knew Before Grant Did
The family chapel sat at the far end of the east wing, a small private room Theodore Parker had built after Grant’s mother, Lillian, fell ill. It held no grand congregation, only two rows of walnut benches, ivory stone walls, and a narrow safe behind a framed cross.
Grant had not opened it since his father’s funeral.
Now he walked there with Helen and Maya beside him and Vanessa following half a step too slowly to pretend she wasn’t listening.
The key to the chapel safe should have been in Helen’s apron pocket.
It wasn’t.
Helen stopped before the cross and searched the pockets of her soaked apron again anyway, though she already knew. “It was here this morning.”
Grant looked at Vanessa.
She gave a short laugh. “You’re not seriously suggesting I searched her clothes.”
“No,” Maya said sharply. “You didn’t have to. You took her spare.”
Grant turned. “Spare?”
Helen nodded. “Inside the cleaning cart wheel. Your father thought I worried too much, so he told me to hide one where only staff would know.”
Grant closed his eyes for one beat.
“Did you check the cart?” he asked Maya.
“Yes. It’s gone.”
Vanessa’s calm was fraying. “This is insane.”
Grant stepped closer. “Then make it sane for me. Why were you in my father’s study? Why do you know what Helen keeps hidden? Why did you follow us here?”
She folded her arms, retreating into contempt. “Because someone in this house has been trying to turn you against me for months, and I decided I was done being treated like an outsider.”
“And that justified pouring mop water over Helen?”
A pause.
Then Vanessa said the wrong thing.
“She should’ve stayed where she belonged.”
Even Helen looked up at that.
Grant’s face hardened further, but before he could answer, Maya crouched by the wall base beside the cleaning cart they had pulled in from the hall. Her fingers slipped into a seam under the lower shelf.
“I found something,” she said.
It was not the key.
It was a folded slip of paper, sealed once, but now split open along one side as if someone had checked whether anything important remained inside.
Grant took it.
On the paper, in Theodore Parker’s hand, were only twelve words:
If the key is missing, someone already fears what Grant is about to learn.
Grant lifted his eyes.
May you like
And for the first time since the confrontation began, Vanessa truly looked afraid.
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