The Brother Who Saw a Ghost
Chapter 06 - The Brother Who Saw a Ghost
Victor did not scream.
Sarah almost wished he had. A scream would have been human. Instead, he stared at Daniel with the precise stillness of a man watching a locked vault open from the inside.
Grace stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor. “Dad.”
Daniel took one step into the dining room and gripped the doorframe. The effort cost him. His face went gray beneath the newly trimmed beard, but his eyes never left Victor.
“You look disappointed,” Daniel said.
Victor recovered with frightening speed. “My God,” he breathed. “Daniel?”
He stepped forward, arms slightly open, as if grief had transformed into joy before the witnesses could question it. Sarah moved between them.
Victor stopped.
“My brother is alive,” he said, looking at Sarah with wounded disbelief. “And you hid him from me?”
Daniel laughed softly. “You were better at hiding me.”
The room went silent.
Victor’s expression tightened. “He is clearly unwell. Listen to him. He has suffered some terrible delusion.”
“Names,” Daniel said.
Victor blinked. “What?”
Daniel’s hand trembled against the frame. “I remember names. Dr. Kline. Room twelve. Gray doors. Men with no badges. A nurse who cried when she changed the restraints.”
Victor’s face lost a layer of color.
Sarah saw it. So did Malcolm, standing quietly near the sideboard with one hand inside his jacket.
“Those names mean nothing to me,” Victor said.
Daniel’s gaze moved to the lilies on the console table. “You leaned over my bed and said Sarah cried beautifully at the funeral. You told me I should have signed the transfer before I got sentimental.”
Grace made a small wounded sound.
Victor turned to Sarah. “You cannot believe this. He could have read anything online.”
“The room where they held him,” Sarah said. “Was it online?”
“I don’t know what room he means.”
“The fake ring?”
Victor stiffened.
Sarah removed the ring from her pocket and placed it on the table. It made a soft click against the wood. “This isn’t Daniel’s.”
Victor smiled then, and the smile frightened her more than his anger.
“You are making a mistake,” he said. “A very public, very expensive mistake. Daniel was legally declared dead. The estate was settled. The company reorganized. If this man is Daniel, which I am not admitting, then imagine the scandal. Investors will flee. Your daughter will be dragged through court. Every reporter in the country will ask whether you were too unstable to identify your own husband.”
He knew exactly where to strike.
Sarah felt Grace press against her side.
Then Daniel spoke.
“She identified what you gave her,” he said. “You chose the coffin. You chose the ring. You chose the body.”
Victor’s eyes snapped to him.
Daniel straightened, barely. “Who was in my grave?”
For the first time, Victor looked toward the portrait instead of the people in the room. It was only a glance, but Sarah felt the shape of the secret behind it.
A body had been buried.
A family had mourned.
Someone else had vanished into Daniel’s name.
Victor adjusted his cuffs. “I’m calling my attorney.”
“No,” Sarah said. “You’re leaving.”
Victor’s gaze hardened. “You do not want me as an enemy.”
Sarah stepped close enough to lower her voice.
“Victor, I have spent six years sleeping beside a coffin in my mind. Do you truly think you are what frightens me now?”
The mask cracked.
Only for a heartbeat.
Then Victor walked toward the door. As he passed Daniel, he leaned in and whispered something Sarah could not hear.
Daniel flinched like he had been struck.
Victor left without the lilies.
When the front door closed, Daniel slid down the wall until he was sitting on the marble, breathing too fast.
Sarah knelt beside him. “What did he say?”
Daniel’s eyes filled with a terror older than the evening.
“He said the lighthouse burns twice.”
Sarah did not understand.
But upstairs in the blue room, Daniel’s letter waited with a password built around the same word.
Lighthouse.
May you like
And suddenly Sarah knew Victor was not running from the past.
He was racing them toward whatever proof Daniel had hidden before he disappeared.
