Chapter 55 - The Wax Seal
The mail carrier had left the metal box at the end of my gravel driveway wide open. Inside lay a single, oversized ivory envelope, sealed not with modern adhesive, but with heavy, dark red wax stamped with the old Vance family crest: a falcon gripping an oak branch.
I didn't open it at the mailbox. I carried it inside, checked the deadbolts on the heavy timber door, kissed Lily's forehead as she sat coloring with Mrs. Miller, and took the letter into the kitchen.
My hands were steady. After eighteen months of court battles, foreclosures, and marshals, my nerves had turned to cold cable. I took a paring knife, slit the top edge of the thick rag paper, and drew out the parchment.
The handwriting was unmistakably Melissa's: sharp, erratic, with wide, aggressive loops on the capital letters.
*Dearest Nora,*
*You always were so terribly earnest. So eager to please Daddy, so desperate to keep the little house on the ridge pure and clean and holy. Did you really think twenty pages of bank statements and a few visits from the IRS could undo forty years of legal masonry?*
*Catherine played her part beautifully, didn't she? Two weeks in a warm cell was worth twenty thousand to her pathetic little branch of the family. Meanwhile, the probate court in New Haven just received the registered codicil we uncovered in Montreal. The one Walter signed four days before his stroke.*
*The house you're sleeping in doesn't belong to the trust, Nora. It never did. It belongs to the firstborn child of Walter Vance and Evelyn Cross. And that child wasn't me. It was our brother, Marcus.*
*See you at the courthouse on Friday morning. Bring Lily. She should see where her mother will be sleeping come winter.*
*With fondest Easter memories,*
*Melissa.*
May you like
I dropped the paper onto the butcher block. The ink seemed to bleed under the kitchen lights. A soft knock came from the back door, and I reached into the knife block without turning around.
"Nora?" a low, rough voice called out through the screen. "It's Greg. Don't shoot. Please. Just let me talk."
