Chapter 22: The Man Who Came for the Evidence

Grant's footsteps stopped at the basement stairs.

I stood beside the hidden room, holding my mother's note in one hand and the cassette in the other.

He appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

His expression changed when he saw the open door.

“Mara.”

I said nothing.

His eyes moved past me and into the room.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I almost laughed.

“This is my house.”

He looked away.

“I know.”

“Then why did you come inside without asking?”

Grant stepped closer.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“You could have called.”

He didn't answer.

His eyes kept returning to the wooden chest.

That was when I understood.

He wasn't here for me.

He was here for whatever my mother had hidden.

I slipped the cassette into my coat pocket.

Grant noticed the movement.

“What did you find?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

His jaw tightened.

“Mara, listen to me. My father has been trying to reach you.”

“He can reach my attorney.”

“This isn't about the property.”

I stared at him.

“Then why were you searching my house?”

Silence.

For the first time, Grant had no excuse ready.

I walked past him and climbed the stairs.

He followed.

“Mara, you don't understand what you're dealing with.”

I turned around.

“I understood enough when your family gave me the service entrance and laughed while your sister received everything.”

His face fell.

“That was different.”

“No. It wasn't.”

I opened the front door.

“You chose Sloane every time.”

Grant looked at me for several seconds.

Then his voice became quiet.

“My father told me Lighthouse Hill was never supposed to stay in your hands.”

My fingers tightened around the doorknob.

“Why?”

He hesitated.

“Because your mother made an agreement with him years ago.”

I felt the floor shift beneath me.

“What agreement?”

Grant shook his head.

“I don't know all of it.”

“But you know enough to come searching through my basement.”

He looked toward the hidden room.

“There are documents in there that could destroy my family.”

I stared at him.

For once, Grant wasn't asking me to forgive him.

He was afraid.

And that frightened me more than anything else.

My attorney arrived twenty minutes later.

Grant left without another word.

Before he walked through the gate, he looked back at Lighthouse Hill.

Not at me.

At the house.

I closed the curtains.

Then I placed the cassette and my mother's note on the table.

My attorney read the note twice.

“Mara,” he said carefully, “we need to find out what happened between your mother and Grant's father.”

I nodded.

“And if the documents prove what I think they will, Lighthouse Hill may be the one thing his family has been trying to control all these years.”

I looked toward the ocean.

For the first time, I understood why my mother had fought so hard to keep this house.

She hadn't just been protecting a property.

She had been protecting me.

And now it was my turn to protect what she left behind.