The Anderson Offering

"The elders are waiting downstairs," he whispered, placing the fragrant bouquet on the small table beside her bed.

"They're lovely," she said, managing a smile. "I'll put them in the crystal vase you gave us as a wedding present just as soon as we get home."

His smile was weak and his eyes avoided her gaze. It was awkward dealing with Axel's relatives. She barely knew them, having seen most of them only at formal gatherings over the course of their married life. But Elsinore was different; she liked him. His soft manner had always appealed to her even though there was always something about his long, melancholy features and those eyes of his. But she stood alone among the Andersons and she knew it; she could never trust any one of them with the plan that had been brewing in her mind since the day she was told the family's darkest secret.

Not that they had meant to tell her. At least not then. If she hadn't found that little white door behind the hidden panel of the closet she might have always thought that the faint scratching and tapping noises she had often heard in the middle of the night were either her over-active imagination or the sounds of an old house settling into itself. But that day she had been looking for something and the deeper she moved into the bowels of the closet the louder the sounds became. She leaned against the panel and her weight tripped a mechanism that slid it open. She had been afraid and called her husband. He rushed home with tearful explanations and nothing had been the same ever since.