Chapter 6 - What Was Buried Below
Inside the blue house on Cedar Street, the kitchen smelled of brewed tea and iodine.
Sarah was dabbing antiseptic onto the scrape on Lily’s eyebrow while Emma sat at the kitchen table, the green journal laid flat between two salt shakers.
"The Vance family owned half of Milfield in the nineteen-eighties," Sarah explained, her hands steady as she worked. "Their father, Elijah Vance, was the town mayor for twenty years. When he died in 1991, he left the entire estate to Julian because Julian was running the family textile mills. Arthur was the younger son—a black sheep who spent ten years in Europe running up gambling debts."
"Julian told us he's been in that room for six months," Lily said, wincing as the alcohol touched her skin. "Where was he before that?"
"In the cellar," Emma said, her fingers turning a yellowed page of the journal. "Look at this entry from 1998."
She read aloud, her voice steadying as she focused on the facts:
“March 12, 1998. Arthur brought food today. He told me the town built the new high school over our old mill pond. He laughed when I asked if they found the iron safe. He doesn't know that the safe wasn't in the pond. It was moved to the wine cellar under the north wing the night Father died.”
"An iron safe," Lily said, leaning over the table. "What was in it?"
Emma turned three pages ahead.
The handwriting grew larger, erratic, written with a dying ballpoint pen:
“November 4, 2005. He showed me the papers today. The Vance Trust isn't money from textiles. It was land payments from the state for the reservoir project in 1974. Father forged fifty-two property deeds from poor farmers in the valley before the land was flooded. The original deeds—the ones showing the real owners—are in the red box inside the safe. If those deeds come out, every dollar the Vance family holds belongs to the descendants of those thirty families in the west ward.”
Lily looked at Emma. Their breath caught in their throats at the exact same moment.
"The west ward," Lily whispered.
"Cedar Street," Emma said, her voice barely audible. "Our house. Our grandfather lived in the valley before the reservoir was filled."
Sarah set the iodine bottle down on the table with a sharp thud.
Her hand reached out, her thumb covering the name written at the bottom of the journal page: Thomas Carter.
"Your grandfather," Sarah whispered, her face turning gray. "He lost forty acres when the valley was flooded in seventy-four. The town told him his deed was invalid because Elijah Vance had bought the rights ten years earlier. He died penniless in a rented room on Elm Street."
Sirens began to wail in the distance—high-pitched, multi-toned police sirens echoing down the hill from the direction of Hillrest Manor.
"They're at the house," Emma stood up.
"Stay here," Sarah commanded, reaching for her coat.
"No!" both girls shouted together.
"He tried to shoot us, Sarah!" Lily said, her camera strap already back over her shoulder. "We know where the hidden latch is! The troopers will never find the room before he moves him if we aren't there to show them!"
May you like
Sarah looked at the two girls—identical, resolute, holding their grandfather’s stolen truth in a green leather book—and realized that the quiet life she had built for them on Cedar Street was over.
"Get in the truck," Sarah said.
