Chapter 2: The Woman Behind My Door
At sunrise, I parked outside the Willow Lake house.
Smoke rose from the chimney, and two cars stood in the driveway.
I knocked.
A woman in a robe opened the door.
“Can I help you?”
“My name is on the deed to this house.”
Her face drained of color.
“That’s impossible.
We lease it from Mercer Household Services.”
“How long?”
“Almost two years.”
My hands began to shake.
“Who receives the rent?”
“Charles Mercer.
Forty-eight hundred dollars every month.”
Then I saw the silver bracelet on her wrist.
“Where did you get that?”
She covered it with her sleeve.
“It came with a birthday card.
Charles said the owner didn’t want it.”
“That bracelet was sent to me by my son.”
She stepped back.
“You need to leave.”
A little girl appeared behind her holding a framed photograph.
Charles stood in the picture with his arm around the woman.
The child looked up at me.
“Are you the lady Grandpa Charles said must never come here?”
Before I could answer, my phone rang.
It was David.
“Mom, don’t enter that house,” he said breathlessly.
“Victoria just confessed something—but she says Charles isn’t the person who planned this.”
Then the woman at the door whispered, “He knows you’re here.”
Who was truly behind the house, the money, and the missing gifts?
May you like
What I discovered next shattered David’s marriage.
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