Chapter 16: The Attic Door

*Check the attic.*

Catherine's words rattled in my skull, louder than the sewing machine, louder than Eleanor’s barking orders.

I waited until nightfall.

The house was asleep. Eleanor had retired after a brandy and a lecture on the importance of "presentation." Richard was in his study, ostensibly reviewing the zoning appeal, but probably texting his mother. The twins were down.

I stood at the bottom of the service stairs in the old wing. This part of the house was colder, the air stagnant and thick with dust. The servants used these stairs a century ago. Now, they were a forgotten artery in the heart of the Vane estate.

I climbed slowly, testing each riser. The third step groaned. I froze, listening. Nothing but the wind against the eaves.

The attic door was at the top of the landing. It was heavy oak, scarred by time, secured by a shiny, modern padlock.

Eleanor kept the key ring in her bedside table. There was no way to get it without waking her.

But Richard was a sentimentalist. He kept tokens of his "glory days" on the shelves in the den. Little trophies.

I went back down to the den. It was empty. I walked to the bookshelf where his high school debate trophy sat, a silver cup gathering dust.

I reached inside. My fingers brushed cold metal.

A small brass key.

He had shown it to me once, years ago, laughing about how he and Julian used to hide up there to smoke cigarettes. "Mom never checks the trophy," he'd said.

I took the key and went back up the stairs. My shadow stretched long and thin against the wall, a distorted figure intruding where it didn't belong.

I reached the door. The padlock gleamed in the beam of my flashlight.

I inserted the key. It was stiff, resistant. I jiggled it, sweating in the cold air.

*Click.*

The shackle popped open.

I pulled the lock free and set it on the floor. I grasped the heavy iron handle of the door. It turned.

I pushed. The hinges screamed, a high-pitched shriek of rusted metal.

I stopped, my heart hammering. I waited for a door to open downstairs. For a voice to call out.

Silence.

I pushed the door open just wide enough to slip through.

The air inside was hot and dry, smelling of turpentine and linseed oil. It wasn't a dusty storage space. It was a studio.

I swept my flashlight beam across the room.

Canvases. Dozens of them. Stacked against the walls, leaning on easels, scattered on the floor.

They were violent. Chaotic. Swirls of black and red, slashed with jagged lines of white.

I walked closer to the nearest one. It was a landscape. A desert. Red rocks and a blindingly bright sky. In the corner, a small house.

I recognized the house. It was the one from the deed in Boulder City.

I moved to the next one. A portrait. A man, his face obscured by shadow, but the posture unmistakable. Richard. He was holding something. A baby.

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.

I turned the flashlight to the corner of the painting. There was a signature.

*C. Vane.*

And a date. *2003.*

Catherine had been painting this whole time. While we ate dinner, while we slept, while I paid the bills that kept her in medication and "consulting fees," she was up here, documenting a life that supposedly didn't exist.

I moved deeper into the room. There was a small table in the corner, covered in sketchbooks. I picked one up.

It fell open to a page filled with writing. Not random scribbles. Lists.

*Account 88392 - Transfer Complete.*
*Account 44921 - Pending.*
*Elena - Suspects.*

My name. In her handwriting.

I turned the page.

It was a drawing of me. Sitting at my desk. Working. The perspective was from above.

From the vent?

I looked up. There was a vent grate in the ceiling of my office, directly above my chair.

Footsteps.

Heavy. Deliberate. Coming up the service stairs.

I killed the flashlight.

The footsteps stopped on the landing. I heard the floorboard groan. The same one I had stepped on.

"Elena?"

It was Richard. His voice wasn't soft. It wasn't charming. It was the voice of a man who knew he'd been found out.

He was standing right outside the door.