Chapter 5 - The House With Two Stories
I was discharged from the hospital Monday morning.
The notary appointment was supposed to happen at ten.
Instead, at ten, I sat in the back seat of Elena’s car while two patrol vehicles followed us toward the house I had shared with Grant for fourteen years.
Renee had wanted me to go directly to a confidential address.
Our attorney agreed.
Detective Harris agreed too.
But before leaving the area, I needed clothing, identification documents, medication for Sophie’s allergies, and the estate files Lucy had seen Diane photographing.
The protective order gave me temporary possession of the home.
It did not make me feel like the house belonged to me.
When we turned onto Maple Hollow Road, my hands started shaking.
Elena noticed.
“We can stop.”
“No.”
“Mara.”
“If I stop every time my body remembers him, I’ll never get my life back.”
Elena did not argue.
The patrol cars entered the driveway first.
An officer checked the front and back doors.
Another walked around the garage and shed.
Grant was still in custody pending a bond hearing.
Diane had been ordered to stay away.
Still, I expected to see one of them through every window.
The front door opened with my key.
The smell of the house hit me immediately.
Coffee.
Laundry detergent.
The cinnamon candle Sophie liked.
Normal smells.
That was the first cruel thing about going back.
Nothing inside looked like a crime scene.
The couch pillows were straight.
A cereal bowl sat in the sink.
Grant’s work boots were beside the garage door.
A school permission slip waited on the counter.
The house looked as if we might all return that evening and continue pretending.
Lucy refused to come inside.
She stayed in the car with a victim advocate.
Sophie came with me.
She said she needed her backpack.
I suspected she also needed to see the house for herself.
We went upstairs together.
In our bedroom, Grant’s side of the closet was half empty.
That stopped me.
Elena looked over my shoulder.
“Was it like this before?”
“No.”
Several suits were gone.
So were his passport case and a black duffel bag.
“He packed.”
Elena looked toward the hall.
“Before the shed?”
I opened his dresser.
Two drawers were empty.
My stomach tightened.
Grant had not lost control unexpectedly.
He had prepared to leave.
Or he had prepared for me to be gone.
Sophie stood in the doorway.
“Dad said he had a business trip this week.”
I turned.
“When did he tell you?”
“Friday.”
“Where?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Did he say who was going?”
Sophie shook her head.
Then her eyes moved to the empty closet.
“He packed before Saturday.”
It was not a question.
I nodded.
Sophie’s face changed.
Another piece of her father’s story stopped fitting.
We packed clothing into suitcases.
I found my passport in the small safe behind the closet shelves.
Grant’s passport was gone.
The girls’ passports were gone too.
I called Harris immediately.
He told me not to panic.
He asked for the passport numbers if I had them.
I did not.
He said he would notify the appropriate agencies and document the missing passports.
Sophie sat down on the bed.
“Was he going to take us?”
I looked at my twelve-year-old daughter and wished I could lie without causing more harm.
“I don’t know.”
She pulled her knees against her chest.
“I hate not knowing.”
“So do I.”
Downstairs, Elena opened the home office with my key.
The desk had been cleaned.
Not tidied.
Cleaned.
The drawers were empty except for paper clips and blank envelopes.
The filing cabinet had been removed.
There were four rectangular marks in the carpet where it used to stand.
Elena stared at them.
“Someone took the entire cabinet.”
The officer photographed the room.
I checked the garage.
Lucy’s black folder was gone.
So was a locked metal toolbox Grant used for records he claimed were business-related.
Then Sophie called from the hallway.
“Mom?”
Something in her voice made me run.
She stood beside the small desk near the kitchen.
In her hand was a brown envelope.
“My name is on this.”
I took it carefully.
SOPHIE COLLINS was written across the front in Grant’s handwriting.
The envelope was not sealed.
Inside was a printed airline itinerary.
Three tickets.
Grant Collins.
Sophie Collins.
Lucy Collins.
Departure Tuesday at 6:05 a.m.
Destination Toronto.
My legs weakened.
Elena took the pages.
“He planned to leave the country with them.”
Sophie stared at the itinerary.
“He told me the business trip was alone.”
I looked at the booking date.
The tickets had been purchased twelve days earlier.
Twelve days.
Before the shed.
Before the hospital.
Before Grant had filed the emergency custody petition.
He had been planning to take the girls while telling the court I might flee.
The hypocrisy was so complete I almost laughed.
Then I noticed the billing address at the bottom.
North Ridge Holdings LLC.
The same company receiving my property.
The same company tied to Diane.
The same company making payments into my hidden savings account.
Elena photographed the itinerary.
The officer bagged the original.
Sophie stood very still.
“Was Dad going to tell me?”
I put both hands around her shoulders.
“I don’t know.”
Her eyes filled.
“I would have gone if he said you were sick.”
I pulled her against me.
“I know.”
“I would have believed him.”
“I know.”
She cried into my shoulder.
“I almost helped him.”
“No.”
I held her tighter.
“You were his child.”
She shook her head.
“I should have known.”
“No.”
I made her look at me.
“Children are not supposed to investigate their parents.”
Her face crumpled.
“Lucy did.”
“Lucy survived the way she knew how.”
“And I believed him.”
“You survived the way you knew how.”
That was a sentence I needed to learn for myself too.
Elena called from the garage.
“Mara, come here.”
I left Sophie with the advocate and followed Elena outside.
The garage smelled like oil and sawdust.
Elena stood beside the workbench.
A patrol officer held a flashlight against the wall.
“What?”
Elena pointed behind the pegboard.
“There’s a cable.”
The officer carefully pulled the board away.
A thin black wire ran through a drilled hole toward the house.
It ended in a small device fixed beneath the shelf.
I stared at it.
“What is that?”
The officer looked closer.
“Camera.”
My skin prickled.
The lens was positioned through a gap between tools.
It faced the interior door from the house.
Grant had a hidden camera in the garage.
Elena’s expression darkened.
“Maybe security.”
I wanted that explanation.
Then the officer found a second camera.
This one faced the workbench where I often sorted mail and opened packages.
A third camera was hidden near the shelf where I kept the old family file boxes.
There were no visible security cameras outside.
There were no warning stickers.
These cameras were not protecting the house.
They were watching inside it.
The officer contacted Harris.
We were told not to touch the equipment further.
Then something occurred to me.
“If there are cameras in the garage, there may be cameras in the house.”
Elena looked toward the kitchen door.
For the next hour, officers searched common areas.
They found one camera in the smoke detector facing the living room.
One inside a digital clock in the kitchen.
One above the basement stairs.
None were connected to the home security account I knew about.
Sophie looked physically sick.
“He watched us?”
I had no answer.
Then Lucy came inside.
The advocate tried to stop her, but Lucy pushed past and ran to me.
“I forgot something.”
“What?”
“The phone charger.”
“We can buy another one.”
“No.”
She looked toward the backyard.
“The old phone only charges with the broken cable in the shed.”
Every adult in the garage went silent.
Lucy noticed.
“What?”
I crouched despite the pain.
“You are not going to the shed.”
“I don’t have to.”
She pointed toward the back wall of the garage.
“There’s another door.”
I stared at her.
“What other door?”
“The little one Dad uses.”
Elena looked confused.
“There is no little door.”
Lucy walked to a tall storage cabinet.
She touched the side panel.
“Behind this.”
The officer moved us back.
He and another officer shifted the cabinet several inches.
Behind it was a narrow plywood panel painted the same gray as the wall.
A recessed latch sat near the floor.
The officer pulled it open.
Cold air came through the gap.
A narrow passage had been cut between the garage storage wall and the old shed addition.
I had lived in that house for fourteen years.
I did not know it existed.
The officer shone his flashlight inside.
Shelves lined the passage.
A folding chair sat against one wall.
There were plastic storage bins.
A small monitor rested on a crate.
The screen displayed four camera feeds from inside my house.
My stomach turned.
Then the flashlight moved lower.
A black metal filing cabinet stood at the end of the passage.
The same size as the one missing from Grant’s office.
Elena whispered.
“He did not take it away.”
I stared into the hidden space.
“He hid it.”
The officer stopped us from entering.
He called Harris and requested a search warrant expansion before opening anything.
I stood in my own garage while police protected evidence my husband had hidden ten feet from where I parked every day.
Then Lucy tugged on my sleeve.
“There.”
She pointed toward the folding chair.
Something silver lay beneath it.
The officer reached with a gloved hand.
It was a key ring.
Attached to it was a small red plastic tag.
317.
The same number as my father’s safe-deposit box.
For a moment, no one understood.
Then Elena looked at me.
“Dad’s box key was in the sewing tin.”
I nodded.
“So what does that open?”
I stared at the red tag.
May you like
I had the terrible feeling we were about to find out.
