Chapter 3
I thought I had misunderstood him.
“A sister?”
Ryan sat down.
Lily was upstairs with an officer and a child-services counselor who had arrived shortly after Diane left.
Ryan rubbed both hands over his face.
“Her name was Claire.”
“You never told me.”
“I was four.”
“What happened to her?”
He looked at the floor.
“She died.”
My chest tightened.
“How?”
“I was told it was an accident.”
The unknown message remained on his phone.
You should ask Emily what happened to the first child Diane raised.
“Who sent this?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared at Ryan.
“How old was Claire?”
“Eight.”
A chill moved through me.
Lily was seven.
“What kind of accident?”
Ryan swallowed.
“She suffocated.”
I could barely speak.
“Where?”
He closed his eyes.
“In an abandoned chest freezer behind my grandparents’ house.”
For several seconds, I heard nothing.
Not the officers.
Not the footsteps upstairs.
Nothing.
Only Lily’s earlier words.
She put me in there before.
I stood.
“Your mother’s daughter died inside a freezer?”
Ryan immediately shook his head.
“They said Claire was playing hide-and-seek.”
“Who found her?”
“My mother.”
“And you never questioned that?”
“I was four!”
“I mean later.”
His face twisted.
“I tried.”
“When?”
“When I was seventeen.”
I stared at him.
Ryan stood.
“My father had been drinking. He said something about Claire being punished.”
“What exactly?”
“He said, ‘Your mother went too far with Claire.’”
“And then?”
“The next morning, he denied saying it.”
“What happened to your father?”
Ryan looked away.
“He left when I was eighteen.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
His phone buzzed again.
Same unknown number.
Ryan opened the message.
Claire did not climb into that freezer herself.
Below the sentence was an address.
No name.
No explanation.
Just an address about forty minutes away.
I wanted to call the police immediately.
Ryan stopped me.
“What if it’s a trap?”
“What if it’s someone who knows what your mother did?”
The officer downstairs overheard us.
We showed him the messages.
He photographed the screen and told us not to go anywhere alone.
The address would be investigated.
But while he was speaking, another message appeared.
Ryan, your father has waited twenty-nine years to tell you the truth.
Ryan nearly dropped the phone.
“My father?”
The officer asked, “What’s his name?”
“Thomas Carter.”
He wrote it down.
Two hours later, Diane was still being questioned.
Lily had finally fallen asleep in my bed.
Ryan sat beside her.
He touched her hair.
She moved away even while sleeping.
Ryan’s face collapsed.
“I failed her.”
I stood in the doorway.
“You didn’t put her in that refrigerator.”
“I ignored the signs.”
“So did I.”
“But she told me she hated being alone with Mom.”
I froze.
“When?”
“Last month.”
Anger rose through me.
“You never told me that.”
“I thought it was because Mom made her do homework.”
“You thought?”
“I asked Mom.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You asked the person Lily was afraid of?”
Ryan stood.
“I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds exactly as bad as it is.”
“I was raised to believe my mother.”
“And Lily paid for it.”
He looked away.
I hated hurting him.
But I hated what had happened to our daughter more.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
We stared at each other.
Ryan answered on speaker.
“Hello?”
A man breathed on the other end.
Then a rough voice said, “Ryan?”
Ryan’s knees almost buckled.
“Dad?”
The man began crying.
“I’m sorry.”
Ryan gripped the table.
“Where are you?”
“At the address I sent.”
“Did Mom kill Claire?”
Silence.
Then Thomas spoke.
“Your mother locked Claire inside that freezer as punishment.”
Ryan closed his eyes.
I felt sick.
“She told Claire she would let her out after ten minutes,” Thomas continued.
“What happened?”
“She forgot.”
Ryan made a broken sound.
Thomas kept talking.
“I came home hours later.”
“Why wasn’t she arrested?”
“Because I lied.”
Ryan stared into nothing.
“You lied?”
“Your mother said if I told anyone, she would make sure I never saw you again.”
“So you helped her.”
“Yes.”
“You helped her cover up Claire’s death.”
“Yes.”
Ryan’s hand shook.
Then Thomas said, “There’s something else.”
I moved closer to the phone.
“What?”
Thomas took a long breath.
“Diane didn’t come to live with you six months ago because she lost her apartment.”
Ryan looked at me.
“She told us she was broke.”
“She has money,” Thomas said. “A lot of it.”
“Then why did she come?”
May you like
Thomas’s voice became almost a whisper.
“Because she found out Lily was about to inherit Claire’s trust.”
