Chapter 3 - The Guest House Secret
The key to the guest house was kept on a magnetic hook behind our refrigerator.
At 10:45 AM, after we watched Lenora’s silver Buick back out of the driveway and disappear down the street, Shauna and I walked across the frost-bitten lawn. The air was so cold our breath came in white puffs, disappearing into the gray sky.
Emma was safely inside our house, the doors locked from the inside, watching a movie under the supervision of my sister, whom I had called to come over under the pretense of a family emergency.
The guest house smelled exactly like Lenora: lavender water, mothballs, and furniture polish.
It was terrifyingly neat. Every pillow on the sofa was fluffed, every book on the shelf aligned by height. On the mantlepiece, there was a framed photograph of Shauna as a little girl, wearing a high-collared velvet dress, her face pale and her expression entirely blank—no smile, no joy, just the vacant look of a child who had learned to fade into the background.
“In the bedroom closet,” Shauna whispered, her voice trembling as if her mother were still standing in the room.
We walked into the small bedroom. The bed was made with hospital corners, the white quilt pulled tight without a single wrinkle.
Inside the closet, behind a row of neatly hung pastel cardigans and floral dresses, sat the trunk.
It was a heavy, military-style olive green footlocker with rusty brass clasps and a heavy Master Lock padlock securing the center loop.
“Do you know where the key is?” I asked, kneeling before the trunk.
“She... she keeps her keys in her purse,” Shauna said, her hands shaking. “She never leaves them behind.”
I looked around the room, my eyes landing on her sewing basket on the dresser. I walked over, searching through the spools of thread and buttons until I found a pair of heavy, industrial-grade shears.
“Marshall, what are you doing?” Shauna gasped as I came back with the shears and a heavy flathead screwdriver I had brought from our garage.
“I’m not playing nice anymore,” I said.
I wedged the flathead screwdriver into the brass clasp of the lock, using the weight of my shoulder to pry it upward. The metal groaned, a screech of protesting brass echoing in the quiet room. With a sharp CRACK, the old clasp sheared off, the heavy padlock falling to the carpet with a dull thud.
I lifted the lid of the trunk.
The interior was filled with manila folders, neatly labeled in Lenora’s elegant, cursive handwriting.
“Shauna: Grade School”
“Shauna: Medical Records”
“Shauna: University”
“Family Finances”
I pulled out the folder labeled “Shauna: Medical Records” and opened it.
Inside was a history of pain.
There were pediatric files from three different doctors in Indiana. As I flipped through the pages, I saw a terrifying pattern of "accidents."
Age 7: Fractured collarbone (reported as "fell from tree").
Age 9: Severe bruising on the thighs (reported as "fell from bicycle").
Age 12: Concussion (reported as "slipped on ice").
But it was the document at the bottom of the stack that made my blood run cold.
It was a private medical evaluation from a pediatric clinic in Indianapolis, dated August 14, 1998, when Shauna was ten years old. Unlike the other files, this one had a red stamp on the cover: CONFIDENTIAL - DO NOT RELEASE TO PATIENT.
I opened the folder. The report was written by a Dr. Aris Thorne, a pediatric specialist.
"Subject: Shauna Haynes, Age 10. Presenting with multiple deep contusions across the back and buttocks, consistent with repeated impact from a flat, hard object. The mother, Lenora Haynes, claims the injuries were sustained during a fall down a flight of wooden stairs. However, the pattern of the bruising—specifically the presence of distinct linear marks and a thumb-shaped hematoma near the shoulder blade—is highly inconsistent with accidental trauma.
Recommendation: Immediate referral to Child Protective Services for suspected physical abuse. Subject exhibits severe anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and a defensive stance when approached by the mother."
Attached to the report was a yellowed slip of paper—a copy of a letter from child services, stating that the investigation had been closed due to "lack of cooperative evidence" and "character references from the local church and medical board."
Lenora had used her reputation as a nurse and a devout church member to bury the report, but she had kept a copy of it herself. Why? Because it was her insurance policy. She kept it to remind herself of how close she had come to losing control, and perhaps to use as a blueprint for how to handle Emma.
“Oh my God,” Shauna whispered, looking over my shoulder. Tears were streaming down her face, falling onto the yellowed paper. “I... I remember that day. I remember Dr. Thorne. He was so nice to me. He gave me a lollipop. But when we got home... when we got home, my mother told me Dr. Thorne was a bad man who wanted to put me in an orphanage. She made me write a letter saying I lied to him.”
“She kept it,” I said, my voice shaking with a mixture of grief and fury. “She kept the evidence of her own crime, Shauna. She thought she was invincible.”
But as I reached deeper into the trunk, my hand brushed against a small, black electronic device buried beneath a stack of old bank statements.
It was a digital voice recorder—an old Olympus model from the early 2000s.
I pulled it out. The battery indicator was dead, but on the side of the plastic casing, a small piece of masking tape had been stuck, with a date written in faded black ink:
October 12, 2012.
“What is that?” Shauna asked, wiping her eyes.
May you like
“I don't know,” I said, pocketing the recorder and the medical files. “But we’re going to find out. We need to get out of here. It’s almost noon.”
We closed the trunk, hiding the broken clasp as best we could under a loose blanket, and ran back across the lawn to our house.
