Chapter 2 - A Funeral Without a Body
Nobody left Greyhaven House.
Evelyn had ordered them to, but when Lena marched toward the staircase door instead, her grandmother caught her arm.
“Don’t.”
Lena pulled free.
“You buried him.”
“Lena—”
“You let me stand at a grave.”
The accusation echoed through the hall.
Nathan lowered his head.
Another knock came from upstairs.
Not violent.
Patient.
Somehow that was worse.
Evelyn wiped her cheeks.
“Your grandfather is alive.”
Lena laughed once.
It came out strangely.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“There are things—”
“Don’t say there are things I don’t understand.”
Evelyn flinched.
Lena pointed toward the staircase.
“You had eleven years.”
Nathan finally spoke.
“Lena, please.”
She turned on him.
“How long have you known?”
Silence.
That silence gave her the answer.
Her father sat heavily on the hall bench.
“Not from the beginning.”
“How long?”
“Ten years.”
Lena stared at him.
The entire room seemed to tilt.
She had been nine when Nathan learned his father was alive.
He had watched her cry on Arthur’s birthday.
Watched her carry Arthur’s compass to school for a family-history project.
Watched her place flowers beside the memorial stone every June.
And he had said nothing.
The upstairs handle moved again.
Arthur spoke through the door.
“If Lena is there, she deserves the truth.”
Evelyn’s face hardened.
“You lost the right to decide what she deserves.”
“Maybe.”
“Then stop.”
Lena looked between them.
This was not a reunion.
This was an old war resuming.
“Open the door.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know why he came back.”
Arthur answered from upstairs.
“Because someone found me.”
Evelyn went still.
Nathan stood.
“What?”
“Open the door.”
For several seconds no one moved.
Then Evelyn unlocked it.
Lena expected the grandfather preserved in childhood memories: silver hair neatly combed, navy sweaters, polished shoes, peppermint in his coat pocket.
The man descending the stairs was older and thinner.
His hair had gone almost completely white. A pale scar crossed one side of his jaw. His right shoulder still sat slightly lower than his left.
But the eyes were unchanged.
Gray-blue.
Watchful.
Arthur reached the bottom step.
Lena could not move.
He looked at her with an expression that cracked almost immediately.
“My God.”
She hated that his voice still affected her.
“You’re grown.”
“People do that in eleven years.”
Arthur absorbed the blow.
“Yes.”
He looked toward Evelyn.
“I didn’t know she would be here.”
“That makes one of us,” Lena said. “Apparently everyone knows everything except me.”
Arthur’s eyes dropped to the shattered phone.
“The photograph?”
Lena held it up.
“You were behind me.”
“I came through the north passage.”
“What north passage?”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
Arthur continued.
“There’s an old servants’ corridor behind the library wall. It reaches the upper floor and the study.”
Lena remembered feeling watched.
“You saw me.”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“So you stood behind me in a dark room?”
“I was trying to leave before you turned around.”
“That’s comforting.”
Nathan stepped between them.
“Why are you here?”
Arthur’s expression changed.
“I received something three days ago.”
From inside his coat, he removed a folded plastic evidence sleeve.
Within it was a photograph.
Greyhaven House.
Taken from the tree line.
On the back, written in block letters, were four words.
GO HOME, DEAD MAN.
Evelyn sat down.
Arthur continued.
“My address in Nova Scotia wasn’t supposed to be known by anyone except Evelyn.”
Nathan looked at his mother.
“You knew where he was?”
“Not always.”
“You told me he was somewhere in Europe.”
“I told you what I needed you to believe.”
Arthur looked toward the ceiling.
“I came back yesterday. I entered through the old passage because I didn’t want anyone seeing me from the road.”
“You’ve been in this house since yesterday?” Lena asked.
Evelyn said nothing.
Lena understood.
“You knew.”
Evelyn nodded.
“I put him in the old servants’ rooms.”
Lena felt almost dizzy with betrayal.
Arthur placed the photograph on the hall table.
“Someone has been inside my study.”
Nathan looked at him sharply.
“You haven’t had a study for eleven years.”
“Then someone has been inside the room where I hid the records that got a man killed.”
Silence followed.
Arthur looked directly at Lena.
“A man named Peter Lane died the night everyone believed I did.”
Lena frowned.
Nathan looked away.
Arthur continued.
“His death was not an accident.”
Evelyn whispered, “Arthur.”
“No more.”
Arthur’s voice hardened.
“Lena has already paid for our silence without knowing why.”
He turned toward the study stairs.
“There was a ledger hidden behind that mirror. Names, transfers, dates. Enough to prove what happened.”
“And?” Nathan asked.
Arthur looked at him.
“It’s gone.”
Lena glanced at the photograph again.
The stranger in the mirror no longer frightened her most.
“What exactly happened eleven years ago?”
Arthur’s answer was quiet.
“Someone tried to murder me.”
He paused.
May you like
“And when they failed, your family helped the world believe they succeeded.”
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