I searched our attic for the sugar jar.<\/p>\n
It had been replaced years earlier, but my mother remembered keeping the original in a box of household belongings.<\/p>\n
We found it beneath a pile of old Christmas decorations.<\/p>\n
The jar was chipped along the rim.<\/p>\n
I turned it upside down, expecting nothing.<\/p>\n
A small brass key fell onto the attic floor.<\/p>\n
My mother covered her mouth.<\/p>\n
"That's it."<\/p>\n
The key was tarnished, with the number seventeen stamped near its handle.<\/p>\n
I took it to Daniel.<\/p>\n
He compared it with the old survey map and suggested it might fit a storage cabinet or service locker on the Ashford property.<\/p>\n
We couldn't know without examining the site.<\/p>\n
Then Daniel discovered a reference to an old maintenance building numbered seventeen on a map from the year my father disappeared.<\/p>\n
The building had been demolished, but its foundation remained near the greenhouse.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, Victoria's lawyer sent us a letter demanding that we stop contacting the estate's employees.<\/p>\n
Daniel responded formally, explaining that we were seeking information relevant to a property dispute and that we would follow all legal requirements.<\/p>\n
He also warned me not to enter the grounds without permission.<\/p>\n
I understood.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to risk our case by doing something reckless.<\/p>\n
But I could no longer ignore the feeling that my father had left us a trail.<\/p>\n
That night, my mother sat beside me at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
She held the brass key in her palm.<\/p>\n
"Thomas told me he was trying to protect us," she said. "I thought he meant from the Ashfords."<\/p>\n
"What do you think he meant now?"<\/p>\n
She looked at the key.<\/p>\n
"I think he knew someone would come looking for this house."<\/p>\n
A chill ran down my spine.<\/p>\n
Victoria hadn't arrived by accident.<\/p>\n
She had come because something was changing.<\/p>\n
And she seemed determined to act before we discovered why.<\/p>\n
I searched our attic for the sugar jar. It had been replaced years earlier, but my mother remembered keeping the original in a box of household belongings. We found it … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40561,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40541\/revisions\/40561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}