Page 34 of In the Dark of the Past

“You really surprised?” Autumn asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” I admitted. “But it’s like we keep tugging on different threads, and his name’s woven into all of them.”

Autumn tapped her pen against the page. “Strangely, you seem to be, too.” She shifted a document toward me. “Look here. This could be something.”

My eyes caught the name, and the words blurred for a moment. “Stonybrooke Estates,” I whispered. My chest tightened. “That’s where my mom was. It’s where she died.”

Autumn froze, then looked at me, her expression containing omething that knew what grief looked like when it slid in, unexpected and sharp.

“Shit.”

I swallowed, the paper blurring again. I hadn’t thought about Stonybrooke in years. I’d tried not to. The hallway smell of bleach and lemon cleaner. The way sunlight never seemed to make it inside. The empty chair beside hers on visiting days, because she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—speak to me.

“We need Libby,” I said, pushing back from the table. My chair scraped across the floor, too loud in the quiet kitchen. “If there’s a deeper trail, she’ll help us find it.”

Autumn nodded and started gathering the documents, her movements brisk, efficient, seemingly already forming a plan.

Libby arrived an hour later, laptop already open, her bag only half-zipped, hair still damp from what I assumed was the fastest shower in the world. She didn’t bother with greetings.

“Okay,” she said breathlessly, dropping into a chair. “I dug into the Civic Committee data going back eighteen years, though it goes back much further. The Benevolence Fund started under Mayor Charles Grant—Lucas’s dad—as part of a community enrichment program.”

Autumn frowned. “I thought it started as a housing initiative?”

“Eh. Same diff for all intents and purposes,” Libby said with a dismissive flip of her wrist. “But I think that was just the public spin. Check this out.”

She turned her screen to show us a grainy PDF. Numbers, columns, scattered entries that meant little at first glance.

“They used it like a slush fund,” Libby continued. “No transparent ledgers. Just authorizations rubber-stamped from the mayor’s office.”

Autumn leaned in. “Which means no oversight.”

“Bingo.” Libby zoomed in on a highlighted line. “They bought land, paid off debts. If you ask me, that sounds a whole lot like hush money. See this entry? There’s a lump-sum withdrawal tagged to Eleanor’s name.”

I leaned in. “That’s the year she stopped speaking out, wasn’t it?”

Autumn sat back, her eyes narrowing. “You think they paid her off? To keep her quiet? About what?”

“Or they threatened her,” Libby said grimly. “Maybe both. And if she pushed back...maybe that’s why she disappeared.”

A shiver ran through me, the dread crawling bone deep. My mom, Eleanor, my dad—every thread we pulled led back to the same dark root.

I pushed away from the table and stood abruptly. “I need to take this to Finn.”

Autumn and Libby exchanged a look—concern, maybe warning. But neither tried to stop me. Because they knew there was no stopping this. Not anymore.

The sheriff’s parking lot was nearly empty, frost still clinging to the grass along the edges. As I walked inside, the building smelled like old coffee, printer toner, and something spicy someone had microwaved and ruined the air with.

Finn was in his office, hovering over a map on his desk. Red pins marked hiking trails and access points to the forest. He was in a navy Henley, sleeves pushed to his elbows, tension coiled under his skin. When he saw me, he straightened immediately.

“You okay?” he asked.

“No,” I said honestly. “But that’s sort of the new normal, isn’t it?”

He didn’t argue. Just gestured for me to come in.

I dropped the folder onto his desk. “There’s a web of corruption in this town, and it goes back decades. Civic Committee. The Grants. The Benevolence Fund. It touched Eleanor. I’m pretty sure it touched my mom. And I’m starting to think it touched my dad, too.”

He flipped through the documents in silence. I watched the shift in his expression as he read—the tightening jaw, the faint crease between his brows, the way he stopped breathing once or twice.