Chapter 4: Fault Lines

Grace hadn’t been inside the Winters Estate in five years. Not since the night she held Eleanor in her arms, pressing a bag of frozen peas to a split lip and whispering leave him, please, leave him while Eleanor shook her head and lied about how she’d “fallen down the stairs.”

So when Grace stepped through the back service entrance now — through the same door she used to sneak through with pastries Eleanor wasn’t supposed to eat — her knees nearly gave out.

She told herself she was doing it for Vivian. For the girl she used to call sister when the world behind those white columns felt too heavy for just one set of shoulders.

Grace moved quickly through the corridor that still smelled of polished wood and roses. She knew where the records room was — the little office off Daniel’s study where his accountant worked late into the night, scribbling lies that fed the whole town.

The door was locked. Of course it was. Grace’s hands shook as she picked the lock — a trick her father taught her when the family store got too many break-ins to afford a locksmith every time.

Inside, the office was quiet except for the slow tick of an old brass clock. She slipped the flash drive from her pocket — a cheap thing Vivian gave her with a single nod: Plug it in. Copy everything.

She found the computer. The files were right where they shouldn’t have been — carelessly labeled, overconfident. Daniel always thought he was too clever to get caught. But he hadn’t planned on a ghost coming back to pull at all his seams.

As the bar on the screen filled, Grace’s mind flickered back to simpler nights: whispered secrets with Eleanor on the garden swing. Promises to run away to New York. Laughing about boys over stolen wine in Eleanor’s bathroom.

You’re still that girl, she told herself. Brave enough to save a friend.

A noise jolted her — footsteps in the hallway, muffled voices. Her pulse roared in her ears. She yanked the flash drive out, stuffed it in her bra, slipped back into the corridor just as a door down the hall opened.

Daniel’s voice carried — warm, laughing. He was walking with some investor, a man in a sleek suit. He was spinning lies about legacy, about family. His hand rested on the man’s back like a brand. Grace pressed herself against the wall, praying the darkness would swallow her whole.

His shadow passed her. For a moment, she saw the man who ruined her father — who made a girl she loved more than any sister vanish into a grave no one could find.

Grace’s hand balled into a fist. She thought about slamming the flash drive into his face. Take everything. But instead, she slipped down the hallway and out into the garden, heart hammering so hard she thought it might tear her ribs apart.

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At the motel, Vivian sat on the floor by the bed, papers scattered around her like fallen feathers. The revolver lay next to her knee. She hadn’t touched it tonight. She didn’t trust herself to.

She wondered if Jack was out there somewhere, parked near the motel again, watching her window like he could see right through her. She thought about what it would feel like to open the door, to let him see all the broken parts she hid under her hard grin. To say: I’m the woman everyone buried. I’m the ghost they still whisper about. Would you stay if you knew?

A knock shattered the thought.

She scrambled to hide the gun just as Grace slipped inside, rain dripping off her hair, eyes wild and scared and alive.

Grace dropped the flash drive on the bed. “You owe me a lifetime of cinnamon rolls for this,” she said, voice shaking.

Vivian grabbed her, pulled her into a hug so tight it hurt them both. Grace smelled like the past — sugar and stale coffee and forgiveness.

For a moment, they weren’t two broken women standing in a cheap motel with revenge burning holes in their pockets. They were just girls again, promising each other they’d run away. Start over.

But the moment passed. It always did.

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Later, when Grace was gone and the room was quiet again, Vivian plugged in the drive. Files blinked onto her screen — names, numbers, dirty money dripping through charities and ghost accounts.

Proof. Enough to bury Daniel Winters alive.

Her throat tightened. She should have felt only triumph — the sweet taste of revenge. But under it was something else: fear. Hope. That terrible, dangerous whisper that maybe — maybe — she could have a life after this. A real one.

She almost didn’t hear the knock at the door.

It was Jack this time — dark coat, tired eyes, rain on his shoulders. He didn’t wait for her to invite him in.

He stepped inside, shut the door behind him, and looked at her — really looked. At the bags under her eyes, the tremble in her hands she couldn’t hide fast enough.

“I need you to tell me the truth, Vivian,” he said, voice rough. “Right now. Because whatever you’re standing in the middle of — it’s about to swallow this whole town.”

Vivian stared at him, the words trapped behind her teeth like birds in a cage.

Maybe she could lie. Maybe she should.

But for the first time in five years, she didn’t want to.

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