They swept out of the room, leaving Audrey alone with the lawyer. The silence was deafening.
“Mr. Sterling,” Audrey whispered. “Why did he… Was he not in his right mind?”
Sterling stood up and walked over to her. He placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Your father was the sharpest man I knew, Audrey. Up until the very end. He wrote this will two weeks ago.”
“Then why did he hate me?”
“He didn’t hate you,” Sterling said, lowering his voice.
He looked at the door to make sure Patricia was gone.
“He told me something when he handed me this file. He said, ‘Patricia looks at the price tag. Audrey looks at the value. Trust her, Audrey. Go to the house.’”
Audrey picked up the rusted key. It felt heavy and cold. She didn’t have twelve million dollars. She didn’t have a mansion. She had a rusted key and a broken heart. But as she walked out into the rain, she didn’t know that Patricia had made a fatal calculation. Patricia thought she had taken everything, but she had left behind the only thing that mattered. The drive to Ravenswood took four hours. It was deep in the darkest part of the state, where the cell service died and the paved roads turned to gravel. By the time Audrey’s old Honda Civic crunched up the driveway of 89 Blackwood Lane, the sun was setting, casting long, skeletal shadows through the trees. Patricia hadn’t been lying. It was a disaster. The house was barely standing. It was a two-story Victorian-style structure that might have been beautiful in the 1920s, but now it looked like a bruise on the landscape. The roof was sagging dangerously in the middle. The windows were boarded up with plywood that had turned gray with rot. The front porch was missing half its slats, looking like a mouth with missing teeth. Audrey turned off the ignition. The silence of the woods was heavy, broken only by the caw of a crow.
“Thanks, Dad,” she muttered, fighting back tears again. “Thanks a lot.”
She stepped out of the car, her boots sinking into the mud. The air smelled of wet pine and decay. As she approached the porch, she saw a condemned notice stapled to the door frame, half peeled away by the wind. She carefully navigated the broken steps, testing each one before putting her weight on it. She reached the front door, a massive slab of oak that had been scratched by wild animals over the years. She took out the rusted iron key. It didn’t fit. She jiggled it. Nothing. She tried to force it. The lock was seized with rust.
“Great,” she sighed.
She looked around for a rock to smash a window, but then she heard a sound behind her, a twig snapping. Audrey spun around. Standing at the edge of the overgrown driveway was a man. He was holding a double-barreled shotgun broken open over his arm, but the sight of it made Audrey’s heart hammer against her ribs. He was older, maybe in his seventies, wearing a faded flannel shirt and suspenders. His face was weathered like old leather.
“You lost, missy?” he growled.
“I… I own this place,” Audrey stammered, holding up the key as if it were a shield. “My name is Audrey Miller. Thomas Miller was my father.”
The old man’s expression changed instantly. The suspicion vanished, replaced by a look of profound shock. He snapped the shotgun closed, not to aim it, but to sling it over his shoulder, and walked toward her.
“Tommy’s girl?” he asked, squinting at her. “Well, I’ll be damned. You got his eyes. I’m Silas. Silas Thorne. I live just up the ridge.”
“Did you know my father?”
Silas let out a dry chuckle.
“Know him? I helped him pour the foundation for the shed out back thirty years ago. He told me you might come. Didn’t think it would be under these circumstances, though. Sorry for your loss. Tommy was a good man.”
“My stepmother doesn’t think so,” Audrey said bitterly. “She got the mansion. I got this.”
She gestured to the rotting house.
Silas looked at the house, then back at Audrey. A strange glint appeared in his eye.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover, girl. Your daddy spent a lot of time out here. More time than he spent at that fancy office.”
“Doing what? Feeding the termites?”
“Thinking,” Silas said. “And building. Here, let me help you with that door. That lock’s tricky. You got to lift the handle while you turn.”
Silas walked up the steps, took the key from her trembling hand, and inserted it. He lifted the heavy brass handle upward and turned the key. With a groan of metal on metal, the bolt slid back.
“Be careful where you step,” Silas warned as he pushed the door open. “Floorboards are soft in the hallway.”
Audrey stepped inside. The smell hit her first. Mustiness, old paper, and something metallic. It was pitch black. She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. The beam cut through the dust motes dancing in the air. The interior was just as bad as the exterior. Wallpaper was peeling in long strips like dead skin. There were bird nests in the corners of the ceiling. The furniture that remained was covered in white sheets, looking like ghosts standing in the dark.
“There’s no power,” Audrey said.
“Generator’s round back,” Silas said from the doorway. “I’ve kept it gassed up. Tommy paid me to keep an eye on things. Said, ‘Keep it ready for Audrey.’ I’ll go fire it up.”
While Silas went around the back, Audrey walked deeper into the house. She entered what used to be the living room. Above the fireplace hung a portrait of her father, but it was slashed diagonally across the canvas. Audrey gasped. She walked closer. It wasn’t a slash from a knife. It was rot or water damage, but it looked violent. Suddenly, the lights flickered once, twice, and then the old chandelier overhead buzzed to life with a dim yellow glow. The house groaned as it woke up. Now that the light was on, Audrey saw something on the mantelpiece. It was the only thing in the room not covered in dust. A red envelope. Her name, Audrey, was written on it in her father’s blocky handwriting. Her hands shook as she picked it up. She tore it open. Inside was a single index card with coordinates and a short message.
“Patricia thinks wealth is what you show the world. I taught you that wealth is what you keep hidden. The house is a test, Audrey. If you sold it immediately, you would have gotten nothing. But since you’re reading this, you came inside. You looked closer. Now look down.”
Audrey frowned. Look down. She looked at her feet. She was standing on a dirty, moth-eaten Persian rug.
Silas walked back in, wiping grease off his hands.
“Got her running. She’ll hold for a few hours.”
He saw the note in her hand.
“He leave you a map?” he said.
