“I’ll call him and have him come up early as well,” she assured her uncle.

“That would be good,” he said.

She bent down and gave him another kiss on his cheek. His dry, flaky skin always grossed her out, but she forced herself. Chelsea smiled over at Douglas as she prepared to exit the room.

Her cousin ignored her. “So, Uncle Howie,” he said, sitting down on the armrest of the old man’s chair, “how about if we have a conversation, too?”

“All right,” Uncle Howard agreed.

Chelsea almost spit. How dare Douglas? Trying to worm his way in before Uncle Howard had a chance to talk to her and Ryan?

She was aware that Carolyn had positioned herself close to the old man’s chair as well. What business did she have listening in?

Unless she was the lawyer drawing up the will…

“Oh, Chelsea,” Douglas called sweetly as she left the study and headed into the hall, “will you be so kind as to shut the doors behind you?”

She seethed, but did as he asked. It wouldn’t be good to upset Uncle Howard now.

She stood there in the hallway staring at the closed double doors of the study. What did her uncle want to speak to her and Ryan about? Either to tell us we’re in the will…or we’re out. She gulped. What were they talking about inside the room at that very moment? Was Douglas brainwashing Uncle Howard against them? That woman…there was clearly a connection with Douglas. She was his girlfriend. That must be it! The little sneak had gotten his girlfriend to act as the old man’s lawyer!

Chelsea wished she could hear what was taking place inside, but the doors were too thick. But then she remembered something.

Upstairs, the room she always stayed in was directly above the study. One night, sitting on the floor leaning against the bed reading a copy of Cosmo she’d stolen from her cousin Paula, she made an exciting discovery. There was a grate on the floor of a heating vent that led down to the study. If you pressed your ear to the grate, you could eavesdrop on the adults below. Chelsea often lay there on the floor listening to the adults in the study below her discussing things she had no clue about. They always seemed to be talking about the lottery. Why, Chelsea didn’t know. Her family never played the lottery. They were far too rich for that.

The recollection of that heating vent brought a smile to Chelsea’s face. There was no time to waste. She bolted from the spot, taking the stairs two at a time. Flying down the upstairs corridor to her room, she closed down the door behind her and nearly threw herself onto the floor. She pressed her ear up against the grate.

Her smile widened.

She could hear them, plain as day.

“It’s just that you haven’t been very available since we came back from seeing Jeanette,” Douglas was saying.

Jeanette? Why did they go see that crazy old lady? Chelsea frowned. She assumed the old man was obliged to leave poor Jeanette something in the will, some kind of perpetual care. Maybe a trust. She assumed Carolyn, as the lawyer, was setting that up.

“I’m sorry,” Uncle Howard replied. “I know I’ve been keeping to my room of late. But you see, all of this, as I’m sure you understand, is very upsetting for me.”

“Mr. Young,” Carolyn said. “You hired me to try to find a way to put an end to ‘all of this,’ as you describe it. And I can’t do that without your full cooperation.”

All of this? What were they talking about?

“I can only tell you so much,” Uncle Howard said. “I expect that whatever else you need to know, you will find out.”

“Mr. Young,” Carolyn retorted, her voice growing sharp, “we only have a couple of weeks!”

A couple of weeks. Chelsea knew what she was referencing. The family reunion was in two weeks. Less than that, in fact. And apparently Uncle Howard expected to have the will ready by then. He’s probably going to announce who’s getting what, Chelsea thought. But what information was he withholding from Carolyn?

“There are some things we need to ask you about, now that we’ve seen Jeanette,” Douglas said.

“What kind of things?” Uncle Howard asked.

There was the sound of paper rustling. Was Carolyn passing out drafts of the will?

“I’ve gone through the various reports filed by those who have worked for you previously,” Carolyn said. Previous lawyers? Were they looking at old wills? Documents that maybe included Chelsea and her family, which Douglas was now aiming to invalidate? “And I can find none by a certain Dr. Fifer.”

“Fifer?” Uncle Howard asked. “Why are you interested in him?”

“Because Jeanette’s companion, Michael O’Toole, mentioned he’d visited Jeanette some time ago.”

“Indeed, he did,” Uncle Howard said. “It was probably 1978 or 1979.”

“Why didn’t he fill out a final report like the rest of them did?”

“I don’t know.”

More papers were being shuffled. “It’s just curious. I’d like to speak with him. Do you still have a contact number?”

“He’s dead.”

Carolyn sighed.

“It was a long time ago,” Uncle Howard said. “Why are you so interested in Fifer? He came no closer than any of the others to ending this terrible thing.”

Terrible thing? Chelsea thought. What are they talking about?

“He seems to have come across a name that none of the others did,” Carolyn said. “A name I can find nowhere in any of these files. A name that upset Jeanette.”

“What name is that?”

“Malcolm.”

There was a pause. Chelsea waited, but the seconds ticked by with no response. In her mind’s eye, she saw Uncle Howard hesitating. She saw him…uncomfortable. She had the sense that the name upset him.

“I don’t know that name,” Uncle Howard said at last, and even a floor away, even without seeing his face, Chelsea knew he was lying. She suspected the others knew it as well.

“Michael O’Toole said the name upset Jeanette when Dr. Fifer mentioned it to her,” Douglas said.

“I suppose poor O’Toole has gone a little stir-crazy all those years watching after Jeanette,” Uncle Howard said. “His memory is faulty. That name means nothing to me.”

“Mr. Young,” Carolyn asked, “are you certain?”

But whatever the old man said in response, it was drowned out by another sound, this one much closer to Chelsea.

Directly behind her, in fact.

The sound of sobbing.

She lifted her head from the floor with a start. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a woman sitting on the other side of the bed, her back to Chelsea. A woman with long dark hair, wearing a white dress.

She was holding her face in her hands and crying.

“Excuse me?” Chelsea said, getting to her feet. “Excuse me, what are you doing here? This is my room.”

Immediately she deduced the woman to be one of Uncle Howard’s servants, one of the nameless revolving cast of nobodies he hired and then let go after a few months. She placed her hands on her hips and scowled. The woman was clearly upset, but that didn’t give her the right to walk into a private room. Chelsea looked over at the door. It was still shut. Had the woman come in and closed it behind her again without Chelsea hearing? Not likely. She must have been in the room the whole time.

“Look here,” Chelsea said, walking around to confront the woman face-to-face. “You’re going to have to leave. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but-”

The woman simply continued to sob into her hands. Chelsea couldn’t see her face. But she noticed she was barefoot. What kind of servant walked around her uncle’s house barefoot?

“Hey, listen,” she said, raising her voice. “You need to get out of here!”

The woman sobbed harder.

“Stop your crying! I can’t take it! I’m going to call my uncle!”

Still nothing but tears.

Chelsea reached down, angry now, grabbing the woman by the shoulders. Immediately the woman’s hands fell away from her face and she looked up at Chelsea.