Chapter 4 - The Ledger in Briar Glen
By sunset, Roger was gone.
He had packed his two duffel bags, his work boots, and his tools, leaving his set of condo keys on the granite kitchen counter beside the unconsumed wedding cake Sarah had left in the refrigerator the night before.
Alice sat alone in the dark living room, her ivory dress still on, staring at the small yellowed bus ticket resting on the coffee table.
Mill Road. Briar Glen. Harper Auto Repair. Vaughn.
The address was a map of her stolen childhood.
At 8:00 a.m. the following morning, Alice got into her sedan and drove west out of Bellmont.
The highway wound through rolling green hills, following the muddy brown ribbon of the river until the high-rise buildings of the city yielded to dilapidated barns, rusted grain silos, and dense stands of pine timber.
Briar Glen was a town that time had forgotten. Main Street consisted of a closed diner, a hardware store with faded plastic signage, a tiny post office, and a single gas station.
Alice turned onto Mill Road, a narrow gravel lane lined with overgrown weeds and leaning telephone poles.
Two miles down the lane, the trees cleared to reveal a wide, gravelly lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. In the center stood a long, low building made of corrugated tin—Harper Auto Repair.
Beside it, stretching all the way down to the riverbank, was an eighty-acre field of scorched, blackened concrete foundations half-buried under thirty years of wild sumac and blackberry brambles.
The site of Mercer Timber.
Alice parked her car by the fence, killed the engine, and stepped out into the humid morning air. The smell of pine and river mud was thick, nostalgic, and agonizingly familiar.
A man stepped out of the auto repair shop, wiping his greasy hands on a red shop towel. He was in his late sixties, with a rounded shoulder, a thick gray beard, and eyes that narrowed suspiciously as he watched her approach the fence.
"We're closed on Sundays," the man grunted.
Alice stopped at the gate. She pulled the faded bus ticket from her coat pocket and held it against the chain-link mesh.
"My name is Alice Mercer," she said clearly. "And I think you knew my father."
The man froze. The shop towel dropped from his hand, fluttering onto the dusty gravel.
"Arthur's girl," he whispered, his voice dry and raspy.
"Are you Harper?" Alice asked.
The man swallowed hard, taking two slow steps back toward his shop door, his hand lingering near the frame as if he were considering running inside.
"I don't want any trouble, lady," Harper said, his voice trembling. "That was twenty-three years ago. Walter Vaughn promised me everything was taken care of."
"Walter Vaughn died two weeks ago," Alice said, stepping closer to the fence. "And his son almost married me yesterday. But Martha Miller gave me this ticket."
Harper let out a long, ragged groan, dropping his head into his rough hands. "Martha... I knew she never let it go. She kept those books until her hands shook too bad to hold a pen."
"I want to see the records, Harper," Alice said, her tone unyielding. "I know your shop was used to store the old files from the timber yard before the fire. Martha told me."
Harper looked up, his eyes filled with an old, rotting fear. "If I give you what's in the back room, Walter's estate will crush me. His lawyers—"
"Walter's estate is controlled by Roger now," Alice interrupted. "And Roger isn't going to crush anyone. Open the gate, Mr. Harper. Or I call the State Police from your driveway."
May you like
Harper stared at her for ten long seconds. Finally, he pulled a heavy ring of keys from his belt, unlocked the padlock on the chain-link gate, and pulled it open with a screech of rusted iron.
"In the back," Harper muttered, turning away. "Under the old tire racks."
