Chapter 10 - The First Wife
The silence inside that stone crypt was deafening. My knees nearly gave out beneath me. I reached out, steadying myself against a cold marble wall.
“Richard’s... first wife?” I stammered, my mind struggling to process the impossible words. “Tyler’s mother? But Diane is our mother!”
“Diane is *your* mother, Charlotte,” Eleanor corrected softly, sitting back down on the stone bench and gesturing for me to sit beside her. “Diane is Tyler’s stepmother. But the family narrative you were fed your entire life was a lie built on blood and greed.”
Eleanor leaned forward, her hands resting firmly on the handle of her cane.
“Thirty-one years ago, Richard Bennett married a brilliant, wealthy young architect named Evelyn Sterling. Yes,” Eleanor nodded toward the name engraved on the mausoleum walls, “Marcus Sterling’s younger sister.”
My mind raced. “The corrupt prosecutor... is Tyler’s uncle?”
“Precisely,” Eleanor said. “Evelyn came from old money. She founded Bennett Construction using her family inheritance, putting Richard in charge of operations while she designed commercial properties. When Tyler was born, Evelyn discovered that Richard was skimming millions of dollars from project budgets, partnering with Victor Morales to use defective steel and concrete.”
Eleanor’s voice grew harsh, heavy with old grief.
“Evelyn threatened to divorce Richard, take Tyler, and turn all her evidence over to federal authorities. But before she could file the paperwork, she mysteriously ‘vanished.’ Richard claimed she had suffered postpartum psychosis and abandoned her newborn son to run off with another man.”
“What happened to her?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“Richard and her own brother, Marcus Sterling, had her secretly committed to an unregulated private psychiatric clinic in southern Wisconsin,” Eleanor revealed. “They used forged medical power of attorney documents to drain her trust funds. Marcus got his campaign for District Attorney funded with her money; Richard kept the construction firm and Tyler.”
“Then... how did she end up in your house nine years ago?” I asked, tears burning my eyes.
“Because six months before the fire, Evelyn escaped that clinic,” Eleanor said. “She had nowhere else to go. She knew Arthur had been investigating Richard before Arthur died. So Evelyn came to Naperville, to my door, starving and broken, seeking refuge.”
Eleanor looked up, meeting my eyes with an intensity that pierced my soul.
“I hid Evelyn in my guest room for five months. We were preparing to take our combined files to the Department of Justice. But your father found out she was with me. On that rainy night nine years ago, when he threw you out, he saw you come into my house. He panicked. He thought I was bringing you into the conspiracy.”
A cold shudder tore through my body. “The night he threw me out... he wasn't just mad about my scholarship.”
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“No,” Eleanor said grimly. “He was clearing the board. Forty-eight hours after you left on that train for Chicago, Richard broke into my house with a can of industrial accelerant. I had gone to the pharmacy to pick up Evelyn’s heart medication. When I came back down the street... my house was an inferno. Evelyn was trapped inside. She died breathing his poison.”
***
