Chapter 5 - The Studio on 4th Street
The next morning, I didn't wait for Nathan to give his explanation. As soon as he took Lily to school, I drove straight to the address Rachel had given me on 4th Street.
The building was an unassuming brick townhouse with a small brass plaque beside the door: Vance Preservation & Historical Archival Services. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The studio smelled of old paper, leather, and chemicals. Large oak tables were scattered throughout the room, covered with magnifying lamps, delicate brushes, and specialized UV lighting rigs. Standing at the central table, wearing white cotton gloves, was Rachel.
She turned as the door chimed, her eyes widening when she saw me.
"Sarah," she said quietly, taking off her gloves. "I wasn't sure if you would come."
"I found the wall compartment in my closet last night," I said, walking toward her table. "I found fragments of my grandmother's handwriting. I want to know what is going on, Rachel. Right now."
Rachel let out a long sigh, but this time, there was no panic in her demeanor—only a solemn, respectful understanding. She gestured to the table in front of her.
"Nathan didn't bring me into your home to hurt you, Sarah," she said softly. "He hired me to save something that meant the world to you."
I stepped closer to the table and looked down. Arranged neatly under glass display plates were dozens of old, restored leather-bound journals, fragile yellowed letters, and original land ownership deeds bearing official wax seals.
"Two years ago, when your mother passed away, you told Nathan about how heart-broken you were that your grandmother’s historical homestead and personal journals were destroyed in the 1990 courthouse fire," Rachel explained. "You told him you felt completely disconnected from your family's history."
I nodded, feeling a lump form in my throat. "Yes... that land was sold off to developers after the records were lost. We couldn't prove our family owned the original land grant."
"Nathan spent three years tracking down missing public records," Rachel revealed, pointing to a thick document stamped with legal seals. "He discovered that the records weren't destroyed in the fire. They had been stolen decades prior by a crooked land speculator and stored in a private estate safe-deposit box, which went up for auction last year when the estate went bankrupt. Nathan used his personal savings to secretly buy the entire lot at auction."
May you like
My eyes flooded with tears as I looked at the documents. "He... he bought them?"
"Yes," Rachel said warmly. "But they were severely water-damaged and rotting from mold. He kept them in the climate-controlled compartment he built in your closet to keep them safe from humidity. He hired me to come in while you were at work to carefully extract the documents piece by piece, treat them in my lab, and bind them into a permanent family archive. He was planning to present this to you on your twelfth anniversary next month—along with legal proof that he successfully filed a quiet title claim to buy back your grandmother's original ten-acre farm."
