Chapter 2 - The Stranger Calls Margaret By Name
Margaret stared at the phone as though it had come back from the dead.
The man beyond the estate fence lifted his own phone to his ear.
Emily stood between Margaret and the mansion.
“Answer it.”
Margaret shook her head.
“Emily, take Sophie inside.”
“No.”
Sophie buried her face against Emily’s shoulder.
Robert, Emily’s husband, had been speaking with guests near the terrace
when the shouting began. He pushed through the crowd and stopped at the
sight of the chain on the grass.
“What happened?”
Emily did not look away from Margaret.
“Your mother locked Sophie behind the garden gate.”
Robert’s expression changed.
“She what?”
“And Sophie says Margaret put something in my champagne.”
Margaret snapped, “I did not poison anyone.”
Nobody had used that word.
The silence after it was devastating.
The guest holding the recording lowered his phone.
Robert looked toward the stranger outside the fence.
“Who is that?”
Margaret’s phone stopped ringing.
A message appeared.
Emily could see only four words from where she stood.
YOU STILL HAVE IT.
Margaret locked the screen.
Robert held out his hand.
“Give me the phone.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
“No.”
The stranger began walking along the fence toward the service entrance.
Event security moved to intercept him.
He stopped before they reached him and raised both hands.
“I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
His voice carried across the lawn.
Margaret whispered, “Liar.”
The man looked directly at her.
“You know better than anyone who the liar is.”
Robert approached the fence.
“Who are you?”
The stranger’s eyes moved over Robert’s face.
Something almost like grief appeared.
“My name is David Mercer.”
Margaret turned away.
Robert frowned.
“That means nothing to me.”
David reached into his jacket slowly and removed an old photograph.
Security took it first.
Then Robert saw it.
The picture showed Margaret as a young woman standing beside two men.
One was Robert’s late father, Charles.
The other was David.
On the back, someone had written:
SUMMER 1993 — BEFORE EVERYTHING CHANGED.
Robert looked at his mother.
“You knew him.”
Margaret said nothing.
David answered for her.
“She knew me very well.”
Emily felt Sophie move against her.
The child whispered:
“That’s the man who stopped Grandma.”
David heard her.
“Yes.”
Emily’s voice sharpened.
“Stopped her from doing what?”
David looked at the shattered champagne glass near the table.
“From making you sleep through what she planned to do next.”
Robert went pale.
Margaret suddenly shouted:
“Get him off this property!”
David did not move.
Instead, he said:
“Ask her what’s inside Charles’s old study.”
Margaret froze.
“Ask her why she locked it this morning.”
Robert stared at his mother.
Charles had been dead for eleven years.
His study had remained untouched.
Until that morning.
May you like
And whatever Margaret had hidden inside it mattered enough for her to
lock a five-year-old child behind an iron gate.
