Chapter 3 - Secrets of the Sinclair Estate
Two days later, I was living in Aunt Mara’s modest but cozy cottage on the outskirts of the city. For the first time in my life, I wasn't waking up to the sound of my mother’s passive-aggressive slamming of cabinets or my father’s cold, evaluating stares.
But peace was a luxury I couldn't yet afford.
"We have to visit the Sinclair estate," Mara told me over breakfast. She pushed a set of rusted, heavy brass keys across the table. "When Diana died, Eleanor and Arthur boarded up her old home. Because of the legal battles, the property has been locked in probate for over two decades. But now that you are twenty-six, and your 'parents' are behind bars, you are the sole legal owner of everything Diana left behind."
An hour later, we pulled up to a wrought-iron gate choked with ivy. Beyond it stood a beautiful, Victorian-style manor. It looked like a sleeping giant, its windows boarded up with grey wood, surrounded by overgrown rose bushes that had gone wild and thorny.
As I stepped onto the porch, my heart hammered against my ribs. I turned the key in the heavy oak door. It turned with a satisfying, deep click.
The interior was frozen in time. Sheets covered the furniture like ghosts. Dust danced in the slivers of sunlight piercing through the cracks in the window boards. But as I walked through the grand foyer, a strange sense of familiarity washed over me. I didn't feel the suffocating anxiety I always felt in Eleanor’s house. I felt... a bizarre, echoing warmth.
"This was your mother’s studio," Mara said, pushing open a set of double doors on the first floor.
The room was massive, featuring a skylight covered in fallen leaves. Canvases were stacked against the walls. In the center of the room stood a large easel, covered by a paint-splattered cloth.
I walked over and pulled the cloth away.
I stopped breathing. It was a painting of a young woman with dark, laughing eyes and a brilliant smile. In her arms, she held a tiny baby with a tuft of dark hair and bright, curious eyes. The baby wore a silver locket.
"That's you," Mara whispered, standing behind me. "And that's Diana. She painted this just weeks before she died."
My eyes drifted to the baby’s neck in the painting. I reached up to my own bare throat. "I don't have that locket."
"Eleanor took it," Mara said, her teeth clenched. "I remember seeing her wear it once, years ago. I demanded she give it back, but she claimed she bought it herself."
I looked around the studio, a sudden fire igniting in my chest. For twenty-six years, I had been told I was nothing, a mistake, a financial drain. But looking at this canvas, I saw the truth. I was loved. I was fiercely, beautifully loved by a woman whose life had been cut short.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an unknown number. I answered it, expecting the detective.
May you like
"Avery," a sleek, arrogant voice spoke through the receiver. It wasn't the detective. It was Richard Vance—not the detective, but Richard Sterling, Eleanor and Arthur’s high-priced family attorney. "I am calling to inform you that your parents have posted bail through an anonymous benefactor. They are currently out of custody, and we are filing an injunction to freeze the Sinclair trust fund. We suggest you settle this quietly, or things will get... complicated."
The phone went dead. The wild roses outside seemed to claw against the windows. They were out. And they weren't done trying to destroy me.
