Chapter 8
Brooklyn Sloane
The silence that followed Gwenyth’s words settled over the foyer like a change in pressure.
Brook didn’t move from her position near the table.
The remaining grapes sat untouched beside her workstation, and the blue-white glow of the monitor continued to pulse against the far wall as though nothing had changed.
But everything had changed.
Moving too quickly toward a woman who had just announced from a staircase that she’d always known her father was dead would accomplish nothing except driving her back behind the closed door of her suite.
Dale recovered first, though poorly. He turned toward Gwenyth with his hands half-raised in a gesture that was either surrender or supplication, and the composure he’d walked in with had cracked wide enough to expose the man underneath it.
“Gwenyth, sweetheart, I was trying to spare you.” His voice had shifted into something softer, more practiced, the kind of tone people used when they were performing kindness rather than actually experiencing it. “While we suspected your father was among the…”
Dale couldn’t seem to finish his sentence.
He cleared his throat and continued trying to explain away his decision to exclude her.
“The sheriff just confirmed it, Gwenyth. I wanted to wait until the right time to—”
“Leave.”
The lone word was stated with the kind of quiet authority that didn’t require volume. It traveled down the staircase and across the hardwood floor and landed in the dining room doorway, where Dale was still standing with his hands still half-raised.
This was not a woman lost in confusion.
“I’m not going to any facility, Uncle Dale.” Her grip tightened on the banister rail, and her knuckles whitened against the dark wood. “I’m not leaving my home.”
Dale opened his mouth to respond, but whatever he intended to say was cut short by Theo, who hastily stepped forward to redirect the situation.
“Mr. Ellingham, I have a few questions about your brother that I’d like to ask you.” Theo’s tone was even, professional, and carried just enough clout to make it clear that he wasn’t making a suggestion. “Could we step outside and have a word privately?”
Dale hesitated. His attention remained on the staircase, where Gwenyth was staring down at him with an expression that offered nothing. No anger, no grief, and certainly no negotiation. She was simply waiting for him to leave.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this, Gwenyth.” Dale adjusted the cuff of his sleeve once more and drew himself up to his full height. “But I believe the court will rule in my favor. It’s for the best.”
Gwenyth didn’t respond.
She held her uncle’s gaze without a single alteration in her posture, without so much as a blink, and the silence between them stretched until Dale released a long, resigned sigh and turned toward the front entrance.
Theo followed him out, and the heavy oak door closed behind them with a sound that echoed through the foyer and up the staircase, reverberating off the stone walls before fading into the stillness of the house.
Brook waited until the resonance died before she moved. She positioned herself at the base of the staircase. Sylvie remained seated at the dining room table, close enough to observe but far enough to keep the space from feeling too crowded.
“Gwenyth, my name is Brooklyn Sloane.” Brook kept her voice conversational, as though they were meeting at a grocery store rather than in the foyer of a house that had just become the center of a federal investigation.
“My colleague, Sylvie Deering, is sitting at the table. We’re with S&E Investigations, and we’ve been brought in to look into what was found in the greenhouse. ”
Gwenyth didn’t respond immediately. She stood on the landing for several long seconds, her dark eyes moving from Brook to Sylvie and back again.
The faded burgundy wallpaper framed her thin figure from behind, and the dim sconce lighting on the second floor cast her shadow down the staircase in a long, uneven line that nearly touched the toes of Brook’s flats.
Then, without a word, Gwenyth began to descend.
Her steps were careful, one hand trailing along the banister as she came down the right side of the split staircase.
The gray cardigan swayed with each step, and her bare feet made almost no sound on the wood.
She reached the ground floor and stood in front of Brook, folding her arms across her chest.
“Would it be alright if I asked you a few questions?” Brook inquired softly, noticing Gwenyth’s gaze had dropped to her stomach.
“I don’t know anything.”
“That’s perfectly fine.” Brook could smell the same faint lavender from the foyer that Bit had mentioned earlier, dried and stale.
“I’d like to start by saying that we appreciate being able to stay on the estate.
It means a great deal to the team, and we’ll do everything we can to respect your home while we’re here. ”
Something shifted behind Gwenyth’s eyes at the word home, though it was subtle enough that most people would have missed it. A softening, perhaps. Or a recognition that the woman standing in front of her had chosen the right word.
“What did you mean,” Brook asked gently, “when you said you knew your father was buried in the greenhouse?”
“I’ve always known.”
“Known that he was there?”
“Known that he was near.” Gwenyth’s gaze drifted lower to her own bare feet, and her voice lost some of its sharpness, settling into something quieter and more private.
“I could never explain it. I just knew he hadn’t left me.
Not the way everyone said he did. Something told me he was still here, somewhere on the property. He never would have left me willingly.”
Brook absorbed the distinction. Gwenyth hadn’t meant that she’d discovered her father’s remains or that she’d known the greenhouse held a secret.
She had meant something closer to intuition.
The unshakable feeling that the person she loved most in the world was still nearby, even after thirty years of silence.
It had been figurative, not literal, and the difference mattered.
“I can tell that you loved your father very much.”
The simplicity of the statement seemed to reach Gwenyth in a way that a more probing question wouldn’t have.
Her posture relaxed by a single degree, and she unfolded her arms long enough to push a strand of hair behind her ear before crossing them again.
The gesture was small, almost childlike, and it made her appear less like the specter Bit had described and more like the woman who had been living alone in this house for three decades.
“He was a good man,” Gwenyth whispered with remorse. “He loved my mother. He loved her more than anything in this world, and when she died, he just…something went out of him. He wasn’t the same. He still loved me, and I never doubted that, but the light that my mother had put in him was gone.”
Brook listened without interrupting.
“He buried himself in his work after that. His research, his plants, the greenhouse. He believed he could find a cure for what killed her. I don’t think he was foolish for that.
I think he was grieving in the only way he knew how.
” Gwenyth paused, and her brow creased slightly, as though she were sifting through memories that didn’t always cooperate.
“He was gentle. Quiet. He used to read to me at night when I was small, even after Mama died. He would sit on the edge of my bed with one of his botanical journals and make up stories about the plants as if they were characters in a fairytale. He made their world sound like magic.”
“And your uncle?” Brook asked, hoping to steer the conversation to the man who stood to gain by evicting this woman from her home. “Were he and your father close?”
Gwenyth’s expression hardened.
“Uncle Dale and my father didn’t always see eye to eye.
They were very different men. My father valued knowledge, patience, discovery.
Dale valued cash.” It was clear that speaking about her uncle set Gwenyth on edge.
“They argued about the estate all the time. About money. Dale thought my father was wasting the family’s resources on research that would never amount to anything.
My father thought Dale couldn’t see past a dollar sign long enough to understand what truly mattered. ”
“Did they have contact in the years before your father disappeared?”
“Less and less.” Gwenyth’s gaze returned to the floor. “My father pulled away from everyone toward the end. Not just Dale. Everyone. He spent more and more time in the greenhouse, and some nights he didn’t come inside at all. I would bring him dinner. I would…”
Gwenyth’s voice trailed off as if she suddenly couldn’t recall what she’d been trying to convey.
Sylvie hadn’t moved from her seat, her pen resting against her notebook, and Brook wasn’t sure what had just taken place.
The shift had been abrupt, a door closing behind Gwenyth’s eyes that had been open only a moment before.
Eventually, her shoulders drew inward, and the brief openness that had carried her through the last few minutes began to fade like warmth leaving a room after a fire goes out.
“I’m tired,” Gwenyth sharply announced.
She had given more in the last ten minutes than she had likely given anyone in years, and the effort of it was visible in the way her frame seemed to contract beneath the oversized cardigan.
She didn’t turn toward the staircase right away, though.
Instead, she held Brook’s gaze with an intensity that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Find out who killed my father.”
It wasn’t a request.
It was the reason she had come downstairs in the first place.
Brook held her gaze and gave a single, deliberate nod.
“I’ll do my best, Miss Ellingham.”
Gwenyth turned and nearly collided with Bit, who had come around the corner from the kitchen hallway with an energy drink in one hand and a bag of Skittles in the other.
He pulled up short, his eyes widening at the sight of their host, and the energy drink tilted dangerously before he managed to steady it against his chest. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the bag of candy.
A few Skittles escaped the open top and bounced across the hardwood floor like marbles, their bright colors scattering against the dark wood in every direction.
Gwenyth tilted her head and stared at Bit the way a person might regard an unfamiliar species. Bit’s eyes widened in dread as she leaned forward.
“Did Owen send you?” Gwenyth asked guardedly. “Do you have my medicine?”
Bit slowly shook his head, rendered temporarily speechless.
One of the Skittles rolled to a stop against Gwenyth’s bare foot, and she slowly lowered her head before staring down at it, before gradually returning her attention to him.
She held his gaze for a brief moment, then turned without another word and ascended the staircase.
Her bare feet padded softly on the wood, and within seconds, she had disappeared down the second-floor corridor toward her suite.
Bit finally let the air out of his lungs.
He ignored the Skittles on the floor as he made his way into the dining room with exaggerated caution, craning his neck to keep track of Gwenyth’s departure.
He eventually lowered himself into the nearest chair and set the energy drink and the surviving Skittles on the table.
Brook contemplated what had just taken place, realizing they had inadvertently been given a lead.
“Bit, find out who Owen is and why he would be in possession of Gwenyth’s medication. Something doesn’t add up here.”