The Night Daniel Mercer Returned Before the Lies Devoured the Old House

Chapter One

The scratches on her hairline had stopped bleeding, and a thin red line was hidden among the brown hair.

“I brought her here.” Claire broke the ice.

Daniel’s fingers tightened around Veronica’s wrist, then eased. Ruth stared at her. Veronica turned just enough to look back at Daniel, and an unsettling tenderness flickered across her face.

“You really don’t know anything, do you?”

With his free hand, Daniel pulled a bar chair away from the island.

“Sit down.”

Veronica glanced at the chair.

“I told you to sit down.”

She obeyed, though Daniel kept hold of her wrist. Ruth lifted the flare gun at arm’s length and set it on the farthest counter as if it might burn her.

“Open it,” Daniel ordered.

Ruth looked at him apprehensively.

“That flare gun. Check to see if it’s empty.”

“I...I don’t know how to do it.”

“There’s a release button next to the trigger guard.”

Her hands were shaking so much that the flare gun made a sharp and crisp sound on the marble countertop. Claire walked over and took it from Ruth.

“Give it to me,” Daniel said solemnly.

“I know how to do it,” Claire replied.

“How do you know?”

Claire pressed the release button, and the gun barrel popped open, revealing a fired aluminum cartridge case. Daniel looked at her.

“The Lake District Safety Course,” she explained, “it was you who forced me to take it twice.”

Ruth walked across the kitchen and picked up the cordless phone hanging by the pantry door. She pressed the call button and listened for a while.

“There is no blind tone, the line is broken.”

“The storm yesterday knocked out the outside line,” Daniel said, “Use my cell phone to call.”

“Your phone is in the living room,” Claire answered.

“How do you know?”

“I just saw it.”

Daniel looked past her. His phone was lying quietly on the edge of the light-colored carpet, the screen dark.

“Go get it,” he said to Ruth.

Veronica sat upright on the bar stool, one wrist still in Daniel’s grasp. She didn’t struggle. The satin sleeve slipped down, revealing a bruise on his forearm. Daniel didn’t remember that he had hurt her, but he subconsciously relaxed his grip.

Ruth came back with her cell phone.

“The screen is broken.”

“It was broken before.”

“It won’t light up no matter how hard I press it.”

Daniel took it, pressed the side button, and tapped it twice in his palm. No response.

“Use Claire’s phone,” he said.

Claire stared down at the floor.

“Where’s the phone?”

“In your office.”

“What is it doing in my office?”

The corners of Veronica’s lips curved into a faint sneer. It wasn’t until this moment that Daniel truly understood the outline of tonight’s farce.

His eyes moved away from Claire and fell on the broken vase. It was just a plain white ceramic vase, hand-painted with slender blue reeds. It sat by the fireplace for several years. Even after Howard Vale died and the house became less like a home and more like an expensive corpse waiting to be dissected, Ruth insisted on changing it with flowers every Monday.

And among the ceramic shards lay something darker than the carpet. A thick piece of parchment with badly burnt edges. Veronica noticed that his gaze was fixed. Daniel let go of her wrist.

He strode to the fireplace and knelt down. There is still residual warmth on the stone slab. The flare carved a black hole in the floor of the fireplace and even melted a small patch of carpet. He carefully picked up the scrap of paper with two fingers.

Only three words on the paper were barely legible. Trust Amendment. He stood up. Claire raised her chin slightly, even though her face was already as pale as paper. Daniel held up the charred fragment.

“What exactly did you take from my office?”

No one answered.

“Claire.”

Her thumbs rubbed the seams of her sweater.

“I found out last week.”

“What did you find?”

“You know it.”

“I want to hear it from your own mouth.”

“Howard’s Amendment.”

Ruth let out a low cry in her throat and slumped down on the nearest bar stool. Daniel stared at her. She avoided his sight. Veronica placed her hands flat on her knees. She seemed to have regained her condescending composure, but Daniel saw through her forced pretense—her fingers gripped the satin fabric too hard, and the rise and fall of her chest seemed short and labored.

“You swore to me that this thing didn’t exist at all,” she said coldly.

Daniel was still staring at Ruth.

“I asked you point-blank after Howard died. You stood in the library, looked me in the eye and told me there were absolutely no follow-up documents.”

“There is absolutely no follow-up document that is 'legally binding',” Daniel retorted.

“That’s not what you said at the time.”

“When he signed that thing, he was already so sick that he was delirious!”

“He was indeed dying when he signed it, but that’s not the same thing as being 'delirious'.”

Claire took a step closer to the fireplace. Daniel subconsciously stood in front of the burned piece of paper.

“You went through my filing cabinet,” Daniel asked his daughter.

“You hid it.”

“That office is locked!”

“I know where you hid the spare key.”

“Of course you do.”

This sentence was blurted out with a strong sense of sarcasm, and even the father and daughter themselves were stung.

Claire stared at him: “What do you mean?”

“It means that you have been treating this house as a playground. All the rules apply to others, except for you.”

“I learned this from you.”

Ruth closed her eyes in pain.

The sneer on Veronica’s lips disappeared. The air in the room seemed to freeze. Through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, the afterglow of the evening spreads out narrow strips of silver light on Marrow Lake. A motorboat passed by on the other side. The distance was too far, and the people on the boat had no way of knowing that someone had just fired a fatal signal flare indoors in this prestigious Weir Manor.

Daniel folded the scrap of paper in half.

“Where’s the rest?”

“Burned to ashes by a flare,” Veronica said.

Claire shook her head. Daniel turned to her.

“The original was not in that vase at all,” she said.

Veronica stood up abruptly, the legs of the bar chair scraping against the floor. Daniel immediately stepped between them.

“Sit down.”

“She lied to me!” Veronica screamed.

“So you pointed the flare gun at her?!”

“I’m aiming for the vase!”

“You fired into a room! There were three living people standing not ten feet away!”

“She told me the documents were hidden inside!”

“So you think setting it on fire is the most rational way to deal with it?”

“I didn’t mean to burn it!”

Daniel pointed to the blackened base of the fireplace.

“Then what do you want to do?”

Veronica opened her mouth, but was stuck. Claire answered for her.

“She thought the documents were sealed inside the vase.”

Ruth looked at the pile of fragments in shock: “Sealed?”

“She decided Howard had sealed the signed copy inside.”

“Why would he do such a ridiculous thing?”

“Because Veronica told me that Howard had been guarding against my dad and hiding things secretly.”

Daniel turned sharply to Veronica.

“What the hell are you talking about to her?”

“Mostly the truth.”

“Mostly.” Daniel chewed the word.

“I told her, Howard has lost trust in you a long time ago.”

“When Howard thinks he is a good person, he trusts the whole world; when he thinks he is a smart person, he trusts no one. You know this better than anyone else.”