Chapter 11 - What Claire Had Forgotten
Claire began questioning her own memories.
Not because she believed Harold.
Because she realized Mike had spent years protecting secrets from her.
She returned to the cabin.
There she found an old tape recorder.
Mike's voice.
“If Claire finds this, then she is finally asking the right question.”
Claire pressed play.
“You remember meeting me in college.”
A pause.
“But that's not where we first met.”
Claire frowned.
Mike continued.
“You met me once when you were seventeen.”
Claire froze.
She remembered.
A summer.
A car accident.
A young man helping her beside the road.
She had forgotten his face.
Mike's voice continued.
“I was there.”
Claire's hands trembled.
“But Daniel was there too.”
She stopped the recording.
Her memories began returning in fragments.
A boy.
A broken car.
A silver ring.
A symbol drawn on a piece of paper.
And a promise.
“You won't remember this.”
Claire sat down.
Mike had not entered her life by accident.
Neither had Harold.
The three men had been connected to her long before she knew them.
But why?
Claire returned to the hidden room beneath the mansion.
Her own file contained an old photograph.
She was seventeen.
Mike was standing beside her.
Daniel was on the other side.
And behind them stood a fourth person.
Harold.
Claire stared at the photograph.
Her entire understanding of her life collapsed.
Harold hadn't entered her story after Mike's death.
He had been there from the beginning.
Then Claire noticed something written on the back.
ONE OF THEM IS LYING.
She turned the photograph over.
A second note had been added years later.
NOT MIKE.
Claire whispered:
“Then who?”
Her phone rang.
Mike.
The caller ID displayed his name.
Claire couldn't move.
The phone rang again.
She answered.
No one spoke.
May you like
Then a familiar voice whispered:
“Claire, don't trust Daniel.”
