Fake Daughter Is the Real Legend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Men at the Gas Station

Leander quits and drives her out; three men chase her grandmother's locket and Marin drops them all; inside is a key stamped with her 25th birthday.

Helen Ashcroft packed my room four days before the DNA result.

Tonight she sent three men to take my grandmother's locket off my neck.

I was still kneeling by the boxes when Leander, the Ashcroft house security man, came through the door.

He didn't ask about the party. He looked at the row of sealed lids.

Then he looked at the date under the label.

'Tuesday,' he said.

'Tuesday,' I said.

He crouched and picked at the tape with his thumbnail.

A corner lifted. He peeled a strip back and held it to the lamp.

'This is estate tape,' he said. 'The roll from the office supply room.'

'Go on.'

'Helen signs that log herself. Nobody else touches it.'

I looked at the strip in his hand.

So it wasn't a servant's work. It was hers, done by hand, four days early.

Leander stood. He reached to his collar and unclipped the Ashcroft security badge.

He set it on the box beside my hand.

'I'm done working for this house,' he said.

Six years of his life sat on a cardboard lid.

'You'll want that back in the morning,' I said.

'I won't.'

'Then get your car,' I said. 'We're leaving through the back.'

We took the service road past the greenhouse. The gate stood open.

A black sedan sat across it, nose in, blocking the way.

Three men got out.

The first was wide through the shoulders and carried his hands loose.

The second had a canvas jacket and a chain wrapped around his knuckles.

The third stayed by the car and watched the road.

'Miss Ashcroft,' the first one said. 'The necklace. That's all we want.'

Leander stepped in front of me.

'Walk back to the car,' he said, quiet.

I didn't move.

The first man swung. Leander took it on the temple and went down on the gravel.

He didn't get up.

The second man came at me with the chain.

I caught his wrist and turned it. The chain came loose.

He grabbed the locket instead. The chain bit into my neck and snapped.

The links tore skin. My hand came away wet.

The locket was in his fist.

He turned to run.

I hit him in the throat with the flat of my hand and he folded.

The locket dropped into the gravel.

I pinned his arm against the car door and drove my knee into the elbow joint.

He screamed and let go of everything.

The first man came at me again from behind.

I turned and put him down with one strike under the jaw.

The third one was already backing toward the car.

I took two steps and swept his legs. He landed on his back.

Then it was quiet except for the gravel and the three of them breathing wrong.

I crouched over the man in the canvas jacket.

His jacket was open. A fat cream envelope sat inside it.

The Ashcroft estate seal was pressed into the flap.

I pulled it out and put it in my pocket while he watched me do it.

His eyes were open. He saw the seal leave his jacket.

Leander sat up holding the side of his head. Blood ran past his ear.

He looked at the three men on the ground, then at me.

'Who taught you that?' he said.

'My grandmother,' I said.

He looked at me a beat too long.

Then he got up and didn't ask again.

I picked the locket out of the gravel. The clasp was bent.

I worked it open with my thumbnail on the hood of the car.

The photograph was gone. Someone had taken it out.

In its place, against the backing, sat a small brass key.

I turned it over in the porch light.

A 25 was stamped on one face. My birth date was stamped on the other.

Leander came up beside me and looked at it.

'Your father's at the lake house,' he said. 'He's been asking for you since nine.'

'Who's with him?'

'Helen. Bethany. All three of them awake.'

I closed my hand around the key.

'Then we go there now,' I said, 'and at noon tomorrow I walk in and say it to her face.'

'With what?'

I touched my pocket. The envelope was still there.

'With this,' I said. 'And with this.'

We took the north road. The lake house gate stood open.

Helen's car sat in the drive with the engine still warm.

Every window on the ground floor was lit.

I got out and walked up the stone steps.

The key turned in my fingers. The stamped 25 caught the porch light.

Far behind me, back at the Ashcroft gate, one of the three men groaned.

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