Chapter 5 - THE GHOSTS OF WESTCHESTER
The Westchester estate had been locked up since Helen’s passing five years earlier, preserved like a museum of a life Robert could no longer touch.
At midnight, Robert’s Maybach rolled through the wrought-iron gates of the property, crunching over gravel that hadn't seen regular tires in years. He left Sophia sleeping soundly in the care of a trusted private nurse at the Manhattan penthouse, bringing only Marcus and the estate’s aging master key ring.
The main house was dark and smelled of lemon oil and old dust. But Robert walked past it, heading down the stone path toward the isolated guest house tucked beneath a canopy of weeping willows.
"Sir, are you sure about this?" Marcus asked, shining a high-powered flashlight beam against the rotting wooden porch. "The local authorities can process the search warrants in the morning—"
"My father-in-law sold this land to a development trust three years ago, Marcus," Robert said, turning the heavy brass key in the rusted lock. "By morning, the demolition crews arrive to clear the structures for a golf resort. If there are documents here, they’ll be fed into an industrial shredder by noon."
The door swung open with a dry groan.
Inside, the guest house was frozen in time. A single twin bed, a wooden writing desk, and shelves stacked with old art supplies and college textbooks.
Marina had used this studio when she was fifteen.
Robert stepped inside, running his hand over the top of the desk. Dust billowed into the beam of the flashlight. He pulled open the top drawer. It was filled with old charcoal pencils, dried-out paint tubes, and a stack of composition notebooks with Marina’s handwriting scrawled across the covers: Art History 101 – Marina Morgan.
He flipped through them, his chest aching with memories of a daughter who laughed too loudly and painted too late into the night.
Then his fingers brushed against a false bottom in the wooden drawer.
Robert paused. He pried up the thin plywood partition with the edge of a brass key.
May you like
Beneath it lay a sealed, yellowed manila envelope stamped with a confidential hospital label from a clinic in upstate New York, dated seven years ago.
Across the front, written in Marina’s frantic, tear-stained handwriting, were three words: KEEP THIS SAFE.
