Chapter 13 - The Will in the Floorboards
The police treated the box like a sick prank. The local deputy took notes with the bored indifference of a man who didn't understand that monsters don't stay locked behind iron doors when they have millions of dollars to grease the hinges.
"Patricia Vance is under 24-hour psychiatric evaluation, Mrs. Vance," Deputy Miller said, chewing gum as he bagged the soaked stuffed rabbit. "She didn't hike thirty miles through the woods in the middle of the night to drop off a soggy toy."
"Then who did?" I demanded, my voice cracking with rage. "Look at the signature on that release slip! That's the Vance crest embossed at the top!"
He sighed, handing me a case card. "We'll file a report."
The moment his cruiser taillights disappeared down the pine-lined gravel road, I locked every deadbolt and called Daniel.
He arrived forty minutes later, his tires screeching to a halt outside. He looked hollowed out—dark circles carved deep under his eyes, his knuckles scraped and bruised from hours of voluntary physical labor at the shelter where he spent his days trying to atone.
"Where is Sophie?" were the first words out of his mouth, his voice raw.
"Asleep. I gave her warm milk and locked her in the back bedroom," I said coldly, stepping aside to let him enter. "Look at the kitchen counter, Daniel. Look at what your family sent us."
Daniel walked to the island where I had laid the photograph I took of the note and the forged release. His face drained of color until his skin looked like parchment.
"This isn't Patricia," Daniel whispered, his breath hitching. "Patricia didn't do this."
"Don't you dare defend her!" I hissed, grabbing him by the collar of his faded denim jacket, bringing my face inches from his. "She held our baby under water until the bubbles stopped! Who else would send that?"
"Clara, listen to me!" Daniel grabbed my wrists, not roughly, but with desperate urgency. "My mother didn't try to drown Sophie because she hated you. She tried to drown Sophie because of the trust."
I froze. "What trust?"
Daniel closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and pulled a tattered, velvet-bound ledger from his inside pocket. "My grandfather's original will. Patricia thought she burned the only copy twenty-five years ago. But before my father died, he hid the true deed inside the floorboards beneath the library hearth. I dug it up last night after my therapy session."
He flipped the ledger open to a yellowed page embossed with the Vance family crest.
"My grandfather loathed Patricia," Daniel explained, his voice shaking with revelation. "He knew what she was. So he bypassed her and me entirely. The entire Vance fortune—the estate, the offshore accounts, the real estate empire worth sixty million dollars—skips directly to the firstborn granddaughter who reaches the age of five."
I stared at the black ink on the antique page.
Sophie’s fifth birthday was in exactly seven days.
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"If Sophie dies before turning five," Daniel whispered, tears spilling down his cheeks, "the full balance of the trust dissolves into an irrevocable foundation... controlled entirely by the surviving matriarch. Patricia."
***
