The First Wife
Chapter 04 - The First Wife
Daniel had told Emily that Alice was his first wife and Celia would be his second. There had never been another. Yet the woman behind the door spoke as though she knew his old life better than anybody upstairs.
Celia asked for her name. "Mara Bennett," came the answer. "And if he told you I'm dead, he was only half lying."
Celia stood very straight. "Why are you locked in?"
"Because last night he moved me here before the guests arrived. The keypad was supposed to keep the servants away. He didn't know the power company would cut service to the east circuit. The emergency lock still works from this side, but I can't reach the override."
Emily watched Celia try the handle. She didn't understand why a house built for people who owned so much gold and glass could contain a door that a person couldn't open. She knew only that the woman's voice sounded frightened. "I'll get Mrs. Vale," Emily said.
Mara had lived for years in a narrow apartment overlooking a city bus depot. On difficult evenings she stood at the window and counted how many passengers stepped down carefully with their bags, pausing before committing themselves to the sidewalk. She understood that pause. After her marriage failed, she had gone from a comfortable house to borrowed rooms and secretarial work. People praised her for being resilient, a word she had come to dislike because it often meant nobody intended to help.
When Daniel wrote suggesting they could settle the old property matter, she wanted to believe age had softened him. His email was courteous. He remembered the name of her dog and asked after her brother's health. He had always been good at small attentions. He could remember the exact shade of a scarf while forgetting a promise that would cost him something. Still, she took the train to Chicago with a folder of documents and the quiet hope that the past might finally be filed away.
The room beneath the floor was furnished with a proper bed, a lamp, and fresh towels. That was part of what embarrassed her afterward. It didn't look like a prison, and she had entered it of her own accord while Daniel's guests arrived upstairs. He said she could use the private stairs to avoid the photographers. She accepted a cup of tea. By the time she realized the door was controlled from outside, she had talked herself into waiting until morning instead of shouting for help.
"I told myself there was a misunderstanding," she admitted to Celia. "Then I told myself he wouldn't dare. Then I was too ashamed to admit how frightened I was." Celia reached across the table and touched her hand, and the touch was awkward but welcome.
Emily, overhearing, asked a question so direct no one knew how to answer it. "If you're grown up, why do you get scared of somebody?"
Mara considered lying. It would have been easy to say that adults grew out of fear, or that Daniel was unusually powerful. Instead she said, "Because fear doesn't check how old you are. And sometimes the person frightening you is someone you once trusted."
Mrs. Vale quietly moved the kettle from the burner. Her eyes had filled, though she hadn't spoken about her own years of obedience in the Ashcroft house. When she'd first come to work there, Daniel's father had insisted she use the side entrance. Lena, visiting one Christmas, had refused to eat dinner until Mrs. Vale joined them at the table. That small act had made the young woman unforgettable to her. It was one reason she had never stopped asking what happened at Bellwether Lake.
Mrs. Vale arrived ten minutes later with an electrician named Hector, who had worked at the property for twenty years. He examined the keypad without asking questions. After a short struggle with the panel, he released the lock. A dark-haired woman emerged from the narrow room, steadied herself against the jamb, and looked directly at Emily.
She was the woman from beneath the marble. But now she wore the blue shawl and an expression that was more guarded than before. "I didn't expect you to come back."
"You said you waited to see me," Emily replied.
"I did."
Mrs. Vale put an arm around the woman's shoulders. "Mara, we must get you somewhere safe."
Mara shook her head. "Not until we open the red room."
Her story arrived in fragments over tea in the disused sewing room. She had married Daniel at twenty-two, when he was a junior partner in his father's property firm. They divorced quietly seven years before Emily's birth. Or so the records said. Mara claimed the divorce was never finalized because Daniel had forged her signature to avoid giving her a share of the Bellwether estate. She had kept copies of the deed and the original marriage records.
"Why hide downstairs?" Celia asked.
"I came to show Daniel the documents two weeks ago. He told me it would ruin Emily's life if they became public. He suggested I remain here until after his wedding so we could settle privately. I thought I could make him listen. When I tried to leave, the door didn't open." Mara rubbed her wrists, not as though they were injured, but as though the memory of the handle still troubled her.
Emily listened for the part about her mother. It didn't come. Finally she interrupted. "Are you Lena?"
Mara looked at Mrs. Vale. Something passed between them that Emily couldn't read. "No, sweetheart. I knew both sisters. I was their friend, before anyone got rich enough to decide friendship was inconvenient."
"Then why did you know my name?"
"Because I helped bring you home."
Upstairs, Daniel's voice rang through the corridor: "Celia?" Mrs. Vale turned out the lamp. The four of them stood in darkness while he passed the door. He stopped, called again, then walked on.
"He's looking for her," Mara said. "He'll search every room."
Celia went to fetch her car. Hector showed them a service exit through the old scullery, and for the first time Emily saw an adult help someone escape without asking whether her father would be angry. Mrs. Vale took the birth certificate and put it inside her cardigan. They were nearly at the back stairs when a figure appeared at the kitchen entrance.
Daniel wore his shirtsleeves rolled up. He looked less like a dangerous man than a tired father whose dinner had been interrupted. "Mara," he said. "We had an agreement."
"You promised the door would be unlocked."
"I was protecting you from a scandal."
"You were protecting yourself."
Emily stepped from behind Mrs. Vale. Daniel saw her and shut his eyes. When he opened them, the anger was gone. "Emmy. Come with me."
"Did you change my mother's name?" she asked.
A long silence followed. Then Daniel said, "I did what Alice asked me to do."
Mara made a small sound of disbelief. "Alice couldn't have asked you, Daniel. Alice was unconscious after the fire."
"You weren't there."
"I was the one who carried Emily out."
Daniel looked at her, and for the first time his composure failed. "Then you know which sister started it."
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Before anyone could answer, a smoke alarm sounded in the east wing. Through the kitchen window Emily could see an orange flicker behind the curtains of the old library.
Someone had set fire to the room where she'd found the birth certificate.
