Chapter 7 - Back to Blackthorn Hill
I was supposed to stay behind.
I didn’t.
Ethan argued for exactly thirty seconds before realizing I was already transferring into the accessible police van.
“You are impossible.”
“I’ve heard.”
“This is an active hostage situation.”
“And Richard asked for me.”
That was the problem.
Richard had demanded to speak to me.
Blackthorn Hill looked different in daylight.
Smaller.
Less supernatural.
But when the van rounded the bend where Mom had lost control, my body remembered before my mind did.
My hands shook.
I could hear tires screaming.
Mom whispering my name.
Then the road opened ahead.
Richard stood near the old overlook.
Vivian sat on the wet ground several yards away.
Her hands were bound.
No visible weapon was shown from my position, but officers treated the situation with extreme caution.
Police vehicles blocked both directions.
Negotiators spoke through phones.
Ethan crouched beside me.
“You stay behind the vehicle.”
Richard shouted.
“Claire!”
I looked at Ethan.
He hated this.
“I need her closer!”
The negotiator responded.
“She can hear you.”
Richard laughed.
“Then tell her Vivian murdered her mother.”
Vivian screamed.
“You liar!”
Richard turned toward her.
That was when I saw it.
He was unraveling.
The elegant attorney was gone.
His jacket was soaked.
Hair disordered.
Mud covered his shoes.
He looked like a man who had spent his entire life controlling rooms and had finally entered one he couldn’t control.
I called out.
“Why did you kill my father?”
Silence.
Richard looked at me.
“I didn’t.”
“We have his recording.”
His face changed.
Tiny.
But enough.
“And Mom found the money.”
No response.
“Caleb confessed.”
Richard glanced toward the police.
“You think Caleb knows anything?”
“He knows you paid him.”
“Vivian paid him.”
Vivian shouted, “No!”
I kept Richard looking at me.
“Why did Mom have to die?”
His jaw tightened.
“She wouldn’t stop.”
There.
Not a confession.
But close.
“She was going to destroy everything.”
“What?”
“My career. My firm. Thirty years of work.”
“You stole millions.”
“I built that company with your father!”
“It wasn’t yours.”
“He treated me like an employee.”
“You were his attorney.”
“I was the reason he succeeded.”
His voice rose.
Behind the police vehicle, Ethan whispered into his radio.
Every word was being recorded.
I understood.
Keep him talking.
“So you killed him?”
Richard smiled bitterly.
“Your father should have listened.”
Vivian began sobbing.
I felt something inside me settle.
Nine years.
Finally.
“What did you do?”
Richard looked at me.
“He had a weak heart.”
“You drugged him.”
“I helped nature.”
My eyes burned.
“You murdered him.”
Richard didn’t answer.
“And Mom?”
His expression changed.
“Your mother was supposed to stop.”
“She didn’t.”
“No.”
“So you sent Caleb.”
Richard looked toward Vivian.
“She gave me the key.”
Vivian cried harder.
“I didn’t know!”
“You always knew enough,” Richard snapped.
That sentence silenced her.
Because it was true.
Vivian had spent years surviving by knowing just enough to profit and pretending not to know enough to be guilty.
Richard turned back toward me.
“You want someone to blame, Claire? Blame her.”
“I do.”
Vivian looked at me.
“But I blame you too.”
Richard’s face hardened.
“You think this ends with me?”
“Yes.”
“You have no idea how many people benefited.”
“Then they can explain it to investigators.”
For the first time, I saw panic.
Not anger.
Panic.
He had lost control.
Sirens sounded farther down the hill.
Richard looked toward them.
Ethan whispered:
“Claire, move back.”
I did.
Slowly.
Richard suddenly turned.
Officers reacted immediately.
The next few seconds happened too fast for thought.
Commands.
Movement.
Vivian dropping flat.
Richard trying to run toward the tree line.
He slipped on the wet shoulder.
Officers reached him before he made ten yards.
No dramatic final battle.
No heroic punch.
No cinematic death.
Just a frightened sixty-year-old man face-down in wet leaves while handcuffs closed around his wrists.
Sometimes evil looked disappointingly ordinary when it finally lost.
Vivian remained sitting on the ground.
An officer removed the restraints.
She looked at me.
“Claire.”
I said nothing.
“Please.”
Still nothing.
She began walking toward me.
Ethan stepped between us.
Vivian stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at Mom’s sister.
The woman who had helped steal from us.
The woman who knew Dad had been murdered.
The woman who had given Richard the key that let Caleb into our garage.
The woman who had thrown me from my wheelchair.
“You don’t get forgiveness because you’re scared now.”
Her face collapsed.
“I loved Eleanor.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“You loved being forgiven by Eleanor.”
Vivian cried.
Maybe for Mom.
Maybe for herself.
I no longer cared which.
Police arrested her.
As they placed her in the car, she looked back once.
I didn’t.
I looked toward the broken guardrail where Mom’s car had gone through.
Ethan stood beside me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
It was the first honest answer I had given anyone in weeks.
He nodded.
“Fair.”
I looked down at my braces.
“Do you think I’ll ever walk up here?”
“That sounds like a question for your doctor.”
“I’m asking you.”
He smiled faintly.
“I think you’re stubborn enough to annoy gravity.”
I laughed.
And for one second, standing at the place where everything had ended, I felt something beginning.
But the arrests were not the ending.
They were only the moment the secrets stopped hiding.
Because Richard’s office contained one final file.
May you like
And written across its cover was my name.
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