Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN WOODSTOCK
By the time the black SUV crossed the Vermont state line, the storm had erased the highway behind Clare Mercer.
That felt appropriate.
She sat in the rear seat with both hands around a paper cup of tea she had not touched. Her wedding finger looked strangely pale without its ring. Every few minutes, her son shifted beneath her ribs, a steady reminder that she was not running away alone.
At 8:06 on Christmas morning, the driver turned onto a narrow street in Woodstock. Snow lay thick across the roofs, and colored lights glowed in shop windows that would remain closed for the holiday. Parker Pine Books & Bindery occupied the first floor of a crooked brick building near the river. Its sign swung in the wind above a green door.
There was already a light inside.
Clare paid the driver, asked him to wait, and dragged her bags through ankle-deep snow. Before she could knock, the door opened.
The woman standing there was in her late sixties, tall and spare, with silver hair braided over one shoulder. She held an iron poker in one hand.
“We’re closed.”
“Are you Eleanor Vance?”
The woman’s expression did not move, but the poker tightened in her grip.
“Who is asking?”
“Clare Mercer.”
The name struck the room like a dropped glass.
Eleanor began to shut the door.
Clare slid the rosewood box across the threshold.
“William wrote to you.”
For the first time, Eleanor looked frightened.
She stared at the dark red wax on the envelope, then at Clare’s face, then down at the curve beneath Clare’s coat.
“Harrison sent you.”
“Harrison doesn’t know exactly where I am yet.” Clare’s voice broke on the last word, and she hated that it did. “He left me last night to spend Christmas with his mistress. I found this after he walked out.”
Eleanor studied her for another long moment. Then she lowered the poker.
“Bring your bags inside. Your driver is going to freeze.”
The shop smelled of paper, beeswax, and woodsmoke. Leather-bound books crowded floor-to-ceiling shelves. At the back, beyond a curtain, a small binding workshop held presses, awls, linen thread, and jars of pigment. Eleanor locked the door, turned the sign to CLOSED, and led Clare upstairs to an apartment with low ceilings and a blue enamel stove.
Clare placed the documents on the kitchen table.
Eleanor did not touch them immediately. She made tea. She added another log to the fire. Only after she had completed those small acts of control did she break William’s seal.
She read the letter standing up.
Halfway through, her shoulders began to shake.
Clare looked away, giving her the privacy Harrison had denied them both.
At last Eleanor sat down.
“He always did apologize after the damage became permanent,” she said.
Her voice was not bitter. Bitterness would have been easier. It was the voice of someone examining a scar that had stopped hurting years ago but had never disappeared.
She told Clare the story Harrison had buried.
William Mercer had married Eleanor’s mother, Margaret Hale, when they were both twenty. They had opened a twelve-room inn on the coast of Maine with money borrowed against Margaret’s family farm. Margaret designed the rooms, cooked breakfast, kept the books, and persuaded fishermen to carry luggage during tourist season. William charmed investors and stood for photographs.
When the inn succeeded, ambition changed him.
He left Margaret for the daughter of a New York developer. His new father-in-law offered financing on one condition: the first wife and daughter had to disappear from the public story.
“My mother accepted a settlement because William threatened to bankrupt her brothers,” Eleanor said. “He promised me an education and visitation. I received three birthday cards in thirty years.”
“And Harrison?”
“He came here eleven months ago.”
Clare went still.
Eleanor opened a drawer and removed a business card. Harrison’s name was embossed in black beneath the Mercer House crest.
“He said William was confused near the end,” Eleanor continued. “He offered me two million dollars to sign a release declaring I had no familial or financial claim. When I refused, he described every mortgage attached to this building. He knew my suppliers. He knew my grandson’s college.”
“He threatened you.”
“Very politely.”
Shame rose hot behind Clare’s eyes. She had spent eight years beside a man who could recite her coffee order and still treat another human being like an obstacle on a balance sheet.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Eleanor folded William’s letter. “His sins are not inherited through marriage.”
“No. But silence can be.” Clare pushed the trust toward her. “I won’t help him hide you.”
Eleanor finally examined the notarized pages. Her expression sharpened as she reached the schedule granting her and her lawful descendants fifty-one percent of the voting shares. She checked signatures, dates, and the raised seal.
“This is not enough,” she said.
Clare blinked. “It’s his final trust.”
“It is an unfiled copy discovered in the home of the man who benefited from suppressing it. Harrison’s lawyers will call it a draft, a forgery, or evidence stolen by an unstable wife.” Eleanor tapped the brass key. “Where did you find this?”
“In the box.”
Eleanor turned it under the lamp. The stamped emblem showed a compass rose with one point missing.
Her face changed.
“I have seen this mark before.”
She crossed to a shelf and pulled down a faded children’s book called The Lantern Keeper. Inside its cover, written in blue ink, was a dedication.
For Ellie, who always knows where true north is. Love, Papa.
Beneath the words William had drawn the same broken compass.
“The original inn had this emblem over the fireplace,” Eleanor said. “Before the company replaced it with the crown logo. After my mother died, William sent me this book and a note saying the truth was safe ‘under the first light.’ I assumed it was one of his sentimental riddles.”
Clare looked at the key. “The first hotel.”
“Mercer House at Cape Mercy. It has been closed for renovation since October.”
A knock sounded downstairs.
Both women froze.
Three slow knocks. A pause. Then two more.
Eleanor reached for the poker.
Clare checked her phone. Twenty-seven missed calls from Harrison. Six from his chief legal officer, Malcolm Voss. A message had arrived less than a minute ago.
HARRISON: I know you went north. Do not involve Eleanor. You have no idea what you are doing.
Another knock rattled the shop door.
“Mrs. Vance?” a man called. “Vermont State Police. We need to speak with Clare Mercer regarding a stolen estate document.”
Clare’s blood turned cold.
Eleanor moved to the window and lifted the curtain one inch. A dark SUV idled at the curb, but the man outside wore no uniform. Snow covered his shoes, and there were no emergency lights.
“That is not the state police,” Eleanor said.
The front doorknob began to turn.
Clare grabbed the rosewood box. Eleanor opened a narrow pantry door that revealed a staircase descending toward the bindery.
“There’s an alley exit,” she whispered. “Move.”
They had reached the bottom step when glass shattered at the front of the shop.
Clare’s baby kicked hard.
She pressed one hand against her belly and followed Eleanor through a maze of presses and paper stacks. Behind them, boots crushed broken glass.
“Mrs. Mercer,” the stranger called pleasantly. “Mr. Mercer only wants his property returned.”
Eleanor shoved open the alley door. Freezing wind tore through Clare’s coat.
The hired SUV was gone.
At the end of the alley, an old red pickup roared to life. A broad-shouldered man leaned across the passenger seat and threw open the door.
“Mom!”
“Nolan, drive!” Eleanor shouted.
Clare climbed in. Eleanor followed, slamming the door as the false officer appeared in the alley behind them.
The pickup fishtailed onto the snowy road. A black SUV pulled away from the curb in pursuit.
Nolan Vance, Eleanor’s forty-year-old son, glanced at Clare in the mirror. He had his mother’s gray eyes and a scar along his jaw.
“You want to tell me why Mercer security is breaking into our bookstore on Christmas?”
Clare held up the brass key.
“Because your mother owns his company.”
Behind them, the black SUV accelerated.
May you like
Eleanor gripped the dashboard and looked at the road leading east.
“Then we had better find out what William buried before Harrison does.”
