Chapter 3 - The Man from Aaron’s Funeral
Claire’s late husband had been named Aaron.
He died eighteen months earlier after a sudden cardiac event while traveling for work.
No mystery.
No suspicious accident.
No hidden crime.
Just the kind of brutal, ordinary death that tears a hole in a family without offering anyone an enemy to blame.
Claire had spent the first year afterward keeping Mason and newborn Ellie moving through the days.
Wake.
Feed.
School.
Work.
Bed.
Repeat.
Brenda entered their lives five months after Aaron’s death.
She came highly recommended by someone Claire trusted.
That detail now bothered her.
Mason sat beside her at the kitchen table while she opened Aaron’s funeral album.
She did not point to faces.
She let him look.
Page one.
Nothing.
Page two.
Family.
Page three.
Former coworkers.
Page four—
Mason’s finger stopped.
“There.”
Claire looked.
The man stood near the back of the church.
Mid-forties.
Tall.
Gray jacket.
Dark hair.
She knew him.
Caleb Mercer.
Aaron’s older cousin.
Not close enough to call family in everyday conversation, but close enough to attend weddings and funerals.
Claire had not seen him since the service.
“What did he say when he came here?” she asked.
Mason frowned.
“He told Brenda you still didn’t know.”
Claire felt cold.
“Didn’t know what?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did Brenda say?”
“She said, ‘Keep your voice down. The boy hears everything.’”
Mason looked guilty again.
Claire reached across and covered his hand.
“Listening when adults are hiding something from your family is not the problem here.”
“What is?”
“The adults hiding it.”
He nodded.
Claire continued.
“Did Caleb ever talk to you?”
“Once.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if Dad left me anything.”
There it was.
An object.
Maybe money.
Maybe letters.
Claire immediately rejected the easiest assumption.
Aaron’s estate was settled cleanly.
No missing inheritance.
No secret fortune.
“What did you say?”
“That Dad left me his fishing box.”
Claire knew the one.
Old green tackle box.
Cheap.
Scratched.
Full of lures, hooks, photographs, and the little pocketknife Aaron’s father gave him at sixteen.
Mason kept it under his bed.
Claire had never gone through it closely.
“What happened after you told him?”
Mason’s face tightened.
“Brenda started asking where I kept it.”
The visitor was not interested in the house generally.
He was looking for one thing.
Something Aaron had left with his son.
May you like
And Brenda had been hired to get close enough to find it.
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