Chapter 6: The Side Door

That night I stood on my own front porch with my own key, and it would not turn.

I tried it twice, then a third time, harder.

The brass lock had a shiny new face.

Someone had swapped it that afternoon.

Through the sidelight I could see the hall, the stairs, and the pale blue shape of Norma's cardigan going past with a glass in her hand.

I knocked.

"Norma," I called. "Open the door."

She walked up to the glass and looked at me.

She did not open it.

She smiled, took a slow sip of wine, and turned the porch light off.

I stood in the dark with my suitcase.

"This is my house," I said through the wood.

"It's my husband's house," her voice came back, muffled. "Dean says you can't set foot in it. Go back to your hotel."

"I'm calling the police."

"Call them," she said. "I'll tell them my daughter-in-law is having a breakdown."

I pulled out my phone, and headlights swept across the lawn.

A gray pickup truck with a ladder rack stopped at the curb.

Timothy got out with his toolbox in one hand and a thermos in the other.

"Norma phoned me," he said. "She wanted to know if I could fix a lock that she hadn't broken."

"She changed it."

"I noticed. She changed the front, the back and the garage."

He looked at me, then at the door.

"She didn't change the side one."

"How do you know?"

"She forgot it exists. It's the original lock. Nobody has touched it since my father put it in."

He walked down the flagstone path with me behind him.

The side door was at the end of the kitchen wing, half hidden by a holly bush.

Timothy pulled a ring out of his pocket.

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