Chapter 23 - The Diary of the Dead
The weekend arrived with the cold,
relentless march of a funeral procession.
I stood on the porch,
clutching Maya to my chest,
as Harold’s black sedan pulled into the driveway.
They were here for their first "visitation,"
a four-hour window that felt like an eternity.
I didn't want to let her go.
My arms felt like they were made of stone,
refusing to uncurl from around her small,
warm body.
"Give her to me,
Sarah,"
Martha said,
stepping onto the porch with a triumphant glint in her eyes that she didn't bother to hide.
"We’ll have her back by six."
I looked at Maya,
who was looking at Martha with a blank,
uncomprehending stare.
"If there is one scratch on her,"
I said,
my voice a low,
dangerous growl,
"I will find a way to make sure you never see the light of day again."
Martha laughed,
a soft,
reedy sound,
and took the baby from my arms.
As the car pulled away,
I felt a void in my chest so vast it threatened to swallow me whole.
I walked back into the house,
the silence deafening,
and went straight to the garage.
I needed to find something.
I needed a weapon.
I began to tear through the boxes James had kept,
the ones the FBI had already searched,
looking for anything they might have missed.
I pushed aside old blankets,
broken toys,
and the remnants of the music box that Mark had smashed.
And then,
I saw it.
A small,
velvet-lined jewelry box that had been tucked into the bottom of a crate of James’s old college textbooks.
It wasn't Elena’s.
It was Martha’s.
I opened it,
expecting to find jewelry or old photos,
but instead,
I found a series of small,
neatly folded notes and a leather-bound diary.
I sat on the cold concrete floor and began to read.
The diary didn't belong to Elena.
It belonged to Martha.
And as I turned the pages,
the true horror of the Miller family began to reveal itself.
The affair between James and Elena hadn't been a sudden,
unexplained lapse in judgment.
It had been encouraged.
Martha had written about the "purity of the bloodline."
She had written about her disappointment in me,
the "outsider" who couldn't give her son a daughter.
She had documented the conversations she had with Elena,
the way she had manipulated her daughter into staying close to James,
telling her that her brother was the only one who could truly love her.
"Elena is fragile,"
one entry read.
"She needs James to protect her from the world,
and James needs a legacy that Sarah can never provide."
"If a child is born,
she will be ours."
"The outsider will be discarded,
and the family will be whole again."
I felt a wave of nausea so intense I had to lean my head against the cold metal of the garage door.
It wasn't just James.
It was all of them.
They had planned this for years.
They had used Elena’s instability and James’s desire for a daughter to create a child they could control.
The "accident" that faked Elena’s death was Martha’s idea,
a way to keep the child "pure" and away from any legal complications once she was born.
But Julian Vane had been an unplanned variable.
He was the one who had truly loved Elena,
in his own twisted way,
and he had discovered the truth.
The war in the woods wasn't just about a ledger;
it was a battle between a monster and a group of people who thought they were gods.
I clutched the diary to my chest,
my mind racing.
This was it.
This was the evidence I needed to destroy them.
But as I looked at the handwriting,
so neat and grandmotherly,
I realized that if I brought this to light,
I would be destroying the boys' image of their grandparents forever.
I would be tearing down the last remnants of their family.
Was the truth worth the destruction?
I looked at the clock.
It was five-thirty.
May you like
Maya would be back in thirty minutes.
And I had thirty minutes to decide if I was going to be a mother or an executioner.
