Chapter 9 - THE THING SHE KNEW ABOUT ANNA
Police found Samuel three hours later.
Alive.
He had driven himself to urgent care after someone struck him from behind outside his garage.
His phone had fallen inside during the struggle.
The missing ledger remained gone.
Samuel couldn’t identify the attacker.
“He wore a hood.”
“Did he say anything?”
“One sentence.”
“What?”
Samuel looked at me.
“He said, ‘Old men should leave old graves closed.’”
This was no longer simply my mother screaming and manipulating inside our home.
Someone else was involved.
Detective Morales told me to stop investigating alone.
This time, I listened.
Mostly.
Samuel explained what my mother meant about the night my father died.
“Yes, I saw Daniel.”
I stared at him.
“You told us he died before you could fix things.”
“He did.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Samuel sighed.
“Daniel called me around eight that night.”
My father sounded frightened.
Not physically ill.
Frightened.
He told Samuel he had proof.
Proof of what, he refused to say over the phone.
Samuel went to the house.
My mother was out.
My father gave him a flash drive.
“He told me to keep it.”
“Where is it?”
“Gone.”
“What happened?”
“I hid it in my office.”
“And?”
“Three days after Daniel’s funeral, someone broke in.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You left all of this out?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
The phrase made me furious.
“That sentence has destroyed half my life.”
Samuel went quiet.
I continued.
“My mother abused Anna because Anna didn’t tell me things.”
I pointed toward the hospital band I still hadn’t removed from my wrist.
“My father hid things.”
“You hid things.”
“Everyone keeps protecting me by making me blind.”
Samuel lowered his eyes.
“You’re right.”
It was the first apology from someone in my family that didn’t contain an excuse.
I asked what was on the flash drive.
“Daniel said it proved Evelyn was using money from Carter Development to make payments to someone named Victor.”
“Victor who?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
Rebecca searched the old records.
No Victor.
Then Anna found something.
She called from home.
“Nathan, I know what the message means.”
“What message?”
“Samuel’s unsent text. Your mother knows about Anna.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did you find?”
“Do you remember the employment file from Brighton Holdings?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a Victor.”
I drove home.
Anna showed me.
Victor Hale.
Security consultant.
Employed by Brighton Holdings sixteen years earlier.
The same shell company linked to Thomas Reed’s widow’s address.
We searched his name.
Victor Hale had a criminal record.
Assault.
Extortion.
Illegal debt collection.
He had served six years in prison.
Released nine years ago.
Rebecca found a current photograph.
I had seen him before.
At my father’s funeral.
Standing fifty feet away beside a black sedan.
At the time, I assumed he was an old business associate.
Now I remembered my mother speaking to him in the cemetery parking lot.
Anna whispered,
“She knew him.”
“Yes.”
But Samuel’s text still bothered me.
Your mother knows about Anna.
Not your mother knows Anna found the account.
Something else.
I asked Anna whether there was anything about her past Evelyn could use.
Anna looked confused.
“No.”
Then her face changed.
“What?”
“There is one thing.”
She disappeared upstairs.
Returned with an old photograph.
Her mother.
Her aunt.
And a man I didn’t recognize.
“Who is he?”
“My grandfather.”
I studied his face.
Anna said,
“His name was Thomas.”
My hand froze.
“What was his last name?”
Anna stared at me.
Then she understood why I was asking.
“Reed.”
The room tilted.
Thomas Reed.
The missing man.
My father’s friend.
The man who warned his wife that Evelyn knew why he disappeared.
Anna was his granddaughter.
My wife had married into the family connected to her grandfather’s disappearance.
Neither of us had known.
Or at least, we hadn’t.
My mother had.
I remembered how strongly she opposed Anna from the beginning.
How she once said,
“There’s something about that girl I don’t trust.”
How she begged me not to marry her.
It had never been jealousy alone.
It had been fear.
Anna sat down.
“My grandfather disappeared when my mother was twelve.”
Her voice shook.
“She always said he abandoned them.”
I stared at the photograph.
“What if he didn’t?”
Anna covered her mouth.
Then the doorbell rang.
We froze.
A courier stood outside with an envelope.
No return address.
Inside was a photograph.
My mother standing beside Victor Hale.
Taken yesterday.
May you like
On the back, someone had written:
ASK EVELYN WHERE THOMAS IS BURIED.
