Divorced and Desired

Chapter 5: What the Walls Remember

The handle turned, slow, deliberate.

Claire's whole body locked. She shrank back into the shadow of the study doorway, pressing herself flat against the cold wall, the brass key digging into her clenched fist. Her breath came shallow, timed to the rain hammering the windows so the sound of it wouldn't give her away.

The door swung open.

It wasn't Alexander.

Edward Sterling stepped into the hallway, phone pressed to his ear, a flashlight beam cutting through the dark corridor ahead of him. Claire held herself flat against the doorway's shadow, pulse hammering, as her father-in-law passed close enough that the smell of Red Moor smoke clung to his coat, sharp and expensive, cutting through the room's stale, dusty air.

"—I don't care what he's asking," Edward said into the phone, his voice low and clipped. "Tell Kane's people we don't discuss the arrangement over the phone. Not now. Not with everything else going on."

Claire's pulse spiked.

"He's been patient for eleven years," Edward continued, pacing a slow line down the hallway, his flashlight beam swinging away from her hiding spot. "He can be patient a little longer. If Alexander's marriage falls apart on top of everything else, the last thing we need is Kane deciding this is his moment to move."

A pause. Whoever was on the other end said something Claire couldn't hear.

"No." Edward's voice sharpened. "Margaret handled the safe. That's the arrangement. It stays that way until I say otherwise."

He turned the corner at the end of the hall, his flashlight beam sweeping wide, and for one terrifying second the light cut across the doorway where Claire stood frozen. She held her breath, certain the beam would catch her.

It passed over her without stopping. Edward's footsteps faded down the far staircase, his voice trailing into a lower, private murmur the old house swallowed whole.

Claire held her position a long moment after the sound disappeared, waiting for her pulse to slow, for her hands to stop their fine, constant tremor. When she finally moved, her legs felt stiff and unsteady, like she'd been standing in that spot for hours instead of minutes.

She made her way back through the dark Kestrel Wing corridor, past the dusty photographs of Margaret's vanished sister, and slipped through the door into the main house, easing it shut behind her with both hands, so the old hinges wouldn't creak.

Back in her own room, Claire dropped onto the edge of the bed and opened her fist. The brass key had cut a deep red mark across her palm, and she stared at it before she understood why her hands were shaking so much worse than before.

Eleven years.

Whatever this was, whatever the safe held, whatever Victor Kane wanted—it had been sitting quietly under this roof for eleven years, patient and waiting, the exact number of years Richard had kept her father's file locked away in his own desk.

That couldn't be a coincidence.

She grabbed her phone and texted Richard, her thumbs moving fast despite the late hour.

Does the name Kane mean anything specific to you? Not just initials this time. A full name.

The reply came almost immediately, like he'd been awake, waiting for something.

Where did you hear that name?

Edward Sterling. Just now. On the phone in a part of this house I wasn't supposed to be in.

A long pause. Three dots appeared, disappeared, and appeared again, the way they did when someone was choosing their words carefully.

Victor Kane. That's the name in your father's file. I didn't want to say it outright until I was sure. Claire, if the Sterling’s know that name too, this is bigger than I thought. You need to be very careful in that house until you're out of it for good.

Claire's chest tightened, the words landing hard and cold. She thought of Alexander downstairs somewhere, or maybe he had already gone into the rain to wherever he really spent his nights. She thought of Margaret's careful, cold warning about the board meeting. She thought of a woman's face in an old photograph, softer than Margaret's, standing beside a man who wasn't Edward.

"Margaret's sister," she typed. The one who disappeared. Does that connect to any of this?

The reply took longer this time.

Get some sleep, Claire. We'll talk about everything through tomorrow, in person, where I know exactly who's listening.

It wasn't an answer. It was the kind of non-answer that told her everything she needed to know—that the answer existed and that it scared even Richard enough to save it for daylight.

Claire set the phone down and looked around the enormous, silent bedroom, at the wedding photo she hadn't quite managed to leave behind, at the suitcase still standing packed and ready by the door. Tomorrow she would walk out of Sterling Manor and into Richard's office, into a truth that had apparently been waiting eleven patient years for her to finally come looking.

Tonight, she just needed to survive until morning.

She switched off the lamp and stretched out fully dressed on top of the covers, the brass key still clutched in one hand, listening to the rain against the windows and the old house settling around her.

She almost missed the second set of footsteps, softer than Edward's, moving slowly down the hallway outside her door.

They stopped directly outside her room.

And then, very quietly, the doorknob began to turn.