The Silent Guest

Chapter Ten

Claire's POV

The Goodman Mansion never felt like home. But this morning, it felt like a mausoleum.

The hallway stretched before her like a spine of broken bones—each faded portrait a vertebra of a life too proud to die and too stubborn to leave.

Claire walked in silence.

Below, Rachel's voice echoed from the study. She was speaking with Adam, hushed but urgent. Claire didn't want to hear it. Not yet. Her thoughts were still tangled with Elise's words—spoken coldly the night before when Claire confronted her about the sealed envelope.

"You're not ready," Elise had said, with that calm smile. "There are things you don't need to remember."

But Claire remembered just enough to know something was wrong.

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Flashback – Age 7

It was the scent that brought it back.

Polished wood. Lemon oil. Cigars. Her mother hated that smell.

Claire had been hiding under Elise's desk, knees drawn to her chest. She had heard shouting upstairs—male voices, loud and cruel. Her mother's voice was quiet, choked, scared.

Then a slap.

She hadn't cried. Just stared at her mother's gold locket—the one Elise always said was "too sentimental" to wear—and tried not to make a sound.

That night, they left. Elise told her they were going on a trip. Told her to forget that house. That name. That locket.

But she never did.

Now, Claire found herself in the east wing—the forgotten side of the mansion.

The door was warped, the handle rusted. But she remembered this hallway, even after all these years. The hidden playroom. Her mother used to take her there to read fairy tales when her father was "busy." It wasn't in any floor plan. Laura once told her it had been sealed off when Richard's first wife died.

Claire pushed the door open.

Dust flew up in the air.

The room was as she remembered—small, windowless, cloaked in silence. There was a shelf of broken toys. A cracked mirror. And in the corner, a small cedar chest.

Claire's hands trembled as she knelt beside it.

She flipped open the lid.

Inside—documents. Dozens of them. Most bore the Goodman crest. Others had Elise's name typed neatly at the top.

There was a custody agreement. A notarized contract. An international wire transfer receipt.

And then… the locket.

Her mother's.

Still warm, as if someone had placed it there recently.

Claire opened it.

A photograph of her mother on one side—smiling, radiant. And on the other…

A man she didn't recognize.

Until she did.

She had seen that face before—in oil, framed, hanging above the mansion's grand staircase.

Richard Goodman.

Her grandfather.

Claire's knees gave out. She sat on the floor, breath short.

Her mother wasn't the housemaid like Elise had always implied.

She was family.

No—she was the secret.

Claire flipped through the papers with shaking fingers. One letter stood out—handwritten, trembling script.

"Elise says he'll never claim her. That his name would cause a scandal. But I don't care about his name. I care about Claire. She deserves truth, even if it burns."

Signed: Juliet Vaughn.

Her mother.

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Footsteps.

Claire stuffed the documents into her coat, heart racing. She closed the chest just as the door creaked behind her.

Adam.

He froze in the doorway, face pale.

"You found it," he said softly.

Claire looked up. "You knew?"

"I wasn't sure," he whispered. "But I suspected."

"You let her raise me knowing this? Knowing what she did to my mother?"

Adam closed the door behind him. "She told me she was protecting you."

Claire stepped back. "From what? The truth?"

"No," Adam said, pain in his voice. "From the people who would do anything to bury it."

Claire held up the locket. "She took this from my mother. She erased her. And you let her."

"I was a kid," Adam said, voice low. "By the time I realized, it was too late. Elise controlled everything—our father, the money, the narrative."

Claire laughed bitterly. "Not anymore."

She turned to leave.

Adam grabbed her arm. "Claire—listen. Elise knows you're remembering. If she thinks you've found those papers—"

"What?" Claire snapped. "She'll kill me like she did Laura?"

The silence that followed was answer enough.

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As Claire stepped out into the hall, the walls of the Goodman Mansion felt smaller. Closer. Watching.

She didn't know who to trust. Only that she couldn't trust Elise.

And that somehow, the truth about her mother's death wasn't just a buried scandal—it was a motive.

And the killer hadn't finished yet.