Chapter 4 - The Discovery in the Study
At 8:30 PM that same evening, Mason unlocked the front door of his mother’s house, loosening his tie with a groan of exhaustion.
"Mom? Nora? It smells like takeout, thank goodness, I’m starving," Mason called out, walking down the hallway.
Ephraim emerged from the kitchen holding a porcelain teapot. "Mason, darling. Wash your hands before you sit at the table. Where are Nora and Phoebe? I thought they'd be setting the table by now."
Mason frowned, walking toward the guest room. "Maybe they're upstairs reading. Nora!"
He pushed open the door to the guest room. The room was dark. He flicked on the light switch.
The room was pristine. Too pristine. The bed was made with military precision, but the closet doors stood wide open, revealing empty hangers. Nora’s toiletries, her shoes, and her suitcase were entirely gone.
"What the...?" Mason muttered, walking over to the bedside table.
That was when he saw it. Or rather, what wasn't there. Evelyn’s leather-bound ledger—the sacred family logbook that his mother kept locked in her desk—was sitting wide open on the desktop.
At that exact moment, Evelyn walked into the room, wiping her hands on her apron. "Mason, what's taking you so—oh."
She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes landing on the open journal.
Mason turned around, his face pale, his eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and dread. He picked up the ledger, his hands shaking as he read the open page. The words about the Quiet Oaks apartment, the forced transfer, the premeditated divorce, and the financial trap stared up at him in his mother's undeniable handwriting.
"Mom..." Mason whispered, his voice cracking. "What is this? What have you written here?"
Evelyn’s composure faltered for a fraction of a second before she smoothed her features into an expression of stern maternal authority.
"Give me that, Mason. That is private family business."
"Private business?" Mason shouted, his voice echoing off the freshly painted walls. "You wrote about engineering my wife's ruin! You wrote about stealing our apartment! Did you... did you orchestrate all of this?"
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"I secured your future!" Evelyn fired back, stepping forward, her eyes flashing. "That woman brought nothing to this marriage except debt and an unreasonable attachment to weeds! She doesn't know how to survive in the real world, Mason. She's a parasite, and I was simply helping you prune the dead weight!"
Mason staggered back, dropping the ledger onto the desk as if it had burned his fingers. He felt the sickening weight of reality crashing down on him. Nora hadn't just gone out for a walk. She had discovered the truth. And she was gone.
