Chapter 3: The Man at the Back Door

The car remained across the street, its headlights shining into my bedroom.

Lucy gripped my arm.

“Mom, that’s Aaron’s car.”

I pulled the curtains shut.

“Call Grace.

Tell her to come now, but don’t tell her why over the phone.”

Lucy reached for her cell phone.

Before she could unlock it, someone knocked on our back door.

“Don’t answer it,” she whispered.

The knock came again, harder this time.

“Open the door,” Aaron called.

“I need to talk to you.”

I slipped Ben’s note into my robe pocket and walked into the kitchen.

Lucy stayed close behind me.

“You can talk from outside,” I said through the door.

“You don’t understand what you’re holding.”

“I’m holding a note from my husband saying you lied to me.”

The handle moved.

Aaron still had the spare key we had given him years earlier, but the security chain stopped the door from opening.

“Aaron, get away from my house.”

His face appeared in the narrow gap.

“Give me the note, and I’ll explain everything.”

“You had five years to explain.”

“I was protecting you.”

“From whom?”

Aaron looked past me at Lucy.

“From people who won’t knock first.”

Lucy raised her phone.

“I’m recording you.”

His expression changed.

“Turn that off.”

“No.”

“Lucy, you went through my desk yesterday.

I saw you on the station camera.”

“You gave me the bear,” she said.

“You knew the note was inside.”

“I knew Ben had hidden something.

I didn’t know where.”

I stepped closer to the gap.

“Did you follow us tonight?”

“Yes, because Chief Doyle knows Lucy was asking questions.”

The name stopped me.

Patrick Doyle had signed Ben’s accident report and stood beside me at the memorial.

“What does Doyle have to do with my family?”

Aaron pressed his hand against the door.

“Ben saw something near the cabin.

Doyle believed he made a copy.”

“A copy of what?”

“Open the door.”

“Answer me first.”

Headlights swept across the kitchen wall.

Grace’s car pulled into the driveway, and Aaron stepped back.

“This is your last chance,” he said.

“Give me the note before Doyle learns you have it.”

Grace ran toward the house.

Aaron turned away, but I unhooked the chain and followed him onto the porch.

“You told me there was no way they could have survived.”

Aaron stopped beside his car.

“That was what Doyle ordered me to say.”

My knees nearly gave way.

Grace caught my elbow.

“What is he talking about, Mom?”

I held up Ben’s note.

“Your father knew something was going to happen.”

Aaron opened his car door.

“If you go to the cabin,” he said, “you’ll put every one of your daughters in danger.”

“Is that a warning or a threat?”

His fingers tightened around the door.

“It depends on whether you listen.”

He drove away.

Grace read Ben’s note beneath the porch light, then looked at me.

“We call the state police.”

“Not until we find the proof.”

“Mom, Aaron just threatened us.”

“And for five years, I believed every word he said.”

Lucy stepped between us.

“Dad left that note because he trusted Mom to finish what he started.”

An hour later, Grace drove us along the dark road to the cabin.

We left our phones recording and sent photographs of the note to my other daughters.

Inside, Lucy knelt beside the boys’ old bunk beds.

“This floorboard is loose.”

Grace pulled it up.

The space beneath it was empty except for fresh sawdust and a small brass key.

“Someone got here before us,” she said.

The cabin door slammed shut behind us.