The Story of the Lake
Chapter 04 - The Story of the Lake
Eleanor invited Clara to the Vale residence the next morning. The mansion stood above the river behind iron gates and trimmed hedges, but inside it felt less like a home than a museum built around Thomas’s absence.
His photographs remained on the piano. His books still filled one shelf. Eleanor had kept his bedroom unchanged for twenty-four years.
Clara did not enter it.
“Tell me about the lake,” she said.
Eleanor dismissed the staff and closed the sitting-room doors.
Thomas had died during a private boating trip with Victor and Malcolm Pierce. According to the official report, a storm overturned the boat. Victor reached shore. Thomas did not.
There had been no body.
“Victor said Thomas was injured and disappeared beneath the water,” Eleanor explained. “Malcolm confirmed it. I believed them.”
“Did you know about my mother?”
“I knew Thomas loved a woman named Rose. Victor told me she accepted money and left before the accident.”
Clara placed the photograph on the table. “My mother never accepted anything.”
Eleanor’s eyes filled with shame. “Then I failed both of you.”
Victor entered without knocking. He warned Eleanor that the board had scheduled an emergency meeting. A forgotten clause in the late founder’s trust gave any biological child of Thomas forty percent of the family voting shares. If Clara’s claim was proven, Victor would lose control of the company.
Now Clara understood his fear.
Victor turned to her. “I can offer you security. A home, money, education—everything your mother could not provide.”
“In exchange for what?”
“You withdraw the claim and sign a confidentiality agreement.”
“I have not made a claim.”
“Your existence is a claim.”
Eleanor ordered him out.
At Union Station, Clara and Adrian opened box 318. Inside was a cassette recorder, a bundle of bank receipts, and a small silver compass engraved with Thomas’s initials.
The cassette held Rose’s voice.
She said Thomas had called her the night before the boating trip. He had discovered that Victor and Malcolm were diverting pension funds from Vale hotel employees. Thomas planned to bring the evidence to federal investigators.
“If anything happens to him,” Rose said, “it was not an accident.”
The bank receipts showed monthly payments from a shell company to a private investigator who followed Rose for years.
Then the cassette clicked, and another voice came through.
Thomas.
“Rose, if I do not come back, tell Clara I tried to choose her before they made the choice for me.”
Clara covered her mouth.
May you like
Adrian stopped the tape and stared at the receipts.
The shell company belonged to Victor Vale.
