Chapter 1 - THE KEYS THEY TOOK BEFORE THE GRAVE WAS COLD
My father slapped me before the funeral flowers had begun to wilt.
I was standing beside the dark blue Mercedes Noah had bought me for our tenth anniversary, still wearing the burgundy dress I had worn to bury him, when Richard Bellamy’s palm struck the left side of my face.
My head snapped toward the car window.
“Widows don’t need cars,” he said.
Behind him, my younger brother Ethan laughed.
My mother, Teresa, didn’t.
Somehow that was worse.
She looked at me with the same cold expression she had worn during the graveside service at Green Lawn Cemetery south of Columbus.
“You caused his death.”
I tasted blood where my teeth had caught the inside of my cheek.
My purse had fallen open during the slap. Lipstick, tissues, Noah’s funeral card, and my keys were scattered across the driveway of my parents’ New Albany mansion.
Ethan bent down before I could.
He picked up the Mercedes key fob.
“Give me my keys.”
Ethan tossed them once in the air and caught them.
“You own nothing now.”
Karla, his girlfriend, stood near the stone steps filming everything on her phone.
Nobody helped me.
That was the moment something inside me became strangely calm.
Not peaceful.
Finished.
My father grabbed the collar of my coat and pulled me away from the driver’s door.
“Noah owed this family,” he said. “Until the estate is sorted out, nothing leaves this property.”
“The car is titled to me.”
Ethan opened the driver’s door.
“Was.”
I looked at him.
He smiled.
It was too confident for a man bluffing about a car title.
I knocked my father’s hand from my collar, picked up my phone, and stepped away from them.
“Audrey,” Mom warned.
I didn’t answer.
I opened the vehicle app first, not because I believed a phone could magically settle ownership, but because I wanted a timestamp showing what was happening to the car.
Then I called Hannah Price.
Hannah had been Noah’s estate attorney and, before that, his closest friend from law school.
She answered on the second ring.
“Audrey?”
“My father hit me. Ethan has the Mercedes keys. They’re trying to take the car.”
Her voice changed immediately.
“Are you physically safe?”
“For the moment.”
“Do not fight them over the keys. Photograph what you can and leave the property if you can do so safely.”
I looked toward the mansion.
Four small security cameras were mounted beneath the eaves.
Noah had installed them the previous Christmas after somebody stole packages from the front porch.
My father had complained that they ruined the appearance of the house.
He had apparently forgotten about them.
All four were still connected to the security account Noah had set up under my email address.
Hannah continued.
“And Audrey?”
“Yes?”
“There’s something you need to know before anyone touches Noah’s papers.”
I stopped watching Ethan.
“What papers?”
“The ones he brought to my office three days before he died.”
My throat tightened.
Noah had died eleven days earlier after his SUV left a rain-slicked section of Route 315 on his way home from a meeting with my father.
Until that moment, I had believed the meeting had been about an ordinary family disagreement.
Hannah’s next words told me it hadn’t been.
“Your husband thought Richard was hiding millions of dollars in debt.”
Across the driveway, Ethan stopped laughing.
He couldn’t hear Hannah.
May you like
But my father was watching my face.
And from the way his expression changed, I realized he knew exactly what she was talking about.
Related Stories
