Chapter 6
The former officer’s name was Patrick Cole.
He had retired six months after Dad died and moved to Florida.
At least, that was what his official records claimed.
The security footage showed him loading Mom’s suitcases into a dark SUV at 3:17 that afternoon.
Detective Ruiz sent the image to every nearby department.
“Why would the officer who closed Dad’s case help her escape?” I asked.
Ruiz gave me a grim look.
“You already know the most likely answer.”
Bribery.
Or something worse.
By evening, Olivia had requested a deal.
She refused to speak unless prosecutors reduced the arson charge.
Ruiz arranged an interview anyway, hoping I could make her talk.
Olivia sat behind thick glass in the county detention center.
Her hair smelled faintly of smoke. A bandage covered her left wrist.
When she picked up the phone, she smiled.
“You saved me.”
“I saved myself from becoming someone who could let another person die.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Where is Mom going?”
“Why would I know?”
“She ordered you to burn the journal.”
Olivia’s smile disappeared.
“I didn’t know Nora was inside.”
“The messages say otherwise.”
“Mom said she would probably be gone.”
“And you believed her?”
“I needed the journal.”
“Why?”
Olivia leaned closer to the glass.
“Because Dad wasn’t the man you think he was.”
“I know he lied. I know he was a coward. But none of that excuses what you did.”
“Did Nora tell you why Dad created the trust?”
“For my future.”
Olivia laughed bitterly.
“He created it because he planned to leave us. He was going to give the company to you and start a new life with Nora.”
“Thirty years after their relationship?”
“They never stopped loving each other.”
The words hurt Mom more than they hurt me.
Perhaps that was why she had spent my childhood punishing me.
Every time she looked at me, she saw proof that Dad’s heart belonged somewhere else.
“Did Mom push him?”
Olivia’s eyes moved toward the camera in the corner.
“Get me a deal.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“She didn’t mean to kill him.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What happened?”
“Dad packed a suitcase. He said he was leaving after your eighteenth birthday.”
That date again.
“He planned to take me to Nora.”
“Yes. Mom confronted him in the basement. They fought over the safe-deposit key.”
“Were you there?”
“I was on the stairs.”
“Did she push him?”
Olivia swallowed.
“He grabbed her wrist. She shoved him away. He fell.”
My throat closed.
“And then?”
“He was alive.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“What?”
“He was breathing. He asked me to call an ambulance.”
“Did you?”
Tears formed in Olivia’s eyes, but I no longer trusted tears.
“Mom stopped me.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long, Olivia?”
“Maybe forty minutes.”
I pressed my forehead against the glass.
Forty minutes.
Dad lay injured at the bottom of the stairs while Mom decided whether saving him was convenient.
“Patrick arrived before the ambulance,” Olivia whispered. “Mom called him. He moved things. He told us what to say.”
“Why would he help her?”
“They had been together for years.”
Another betrayal.
Not only had Mom known about Dad’s love for Nora, she had been having an affair of her own.
Yet I was the only person punished for how I had been born.
“Where are they going?”
“Mom kept cash in a storage unit near the airport. Patrick has a cabin across the Canadian border.”
Ruiz, who was listening from the next room, immediately left to alert border authorities.
I looked at Olivia.
“You could have saved him.”
“I was eighteen.”
“So was I. Mom spent the next twelve years telling me I had failed Dad because I didn’t visit him that week.”
“She needed someone to blame.”
“And you helped her.”
Olivia’s face crumpled.
“If I testified, she said I would go to prison.”
“So you stayed silent.”
“She was my mother.”
“She was mine too. At least that was what she claimed.”
As I stood to leave, Olivia struck the glass.
“Daniel, wait.”
I lifted the phone again.
“The missing journal page is inside Mom’s bedroom wall. Behind the family portrait.”
“Why?”
“Dad hid it there before he went downstairs. Mom never knew.”
“You just tried to burn the entire journal.”
“I thought the page was still inside it. I didn’t discover the hiding place until yesterday.”
I left without promising her anything.
At the house, Samuel and I removed the large family portrait from Mom’s bedroom.
I had always hated that picture.
Mom and Dad sat together.
Olivia stood between them.
I had been placed behind the chair, barely visible.
A loose section of drywall opened beneath my fingers.
Inside was a folded journal page and a digital recorder.
The page completed Dad’s final sentence.
His mother and sister have forged documents to steal the trust. Patrick Cole has helped them. I recorded Evelyn’s confession.
I pressed play on the recorder.
Dad’s voice filled the room.
Then Mom’s voice answered him.
“You will not leave me for Nora.”
“I already have.”
“If you walk out that door, Robert, Daniel will never see another dollar.”
“You’ve taken enough from him.”
A crash followed.
Dad groaned.
Then Mom said words I would never forget.
“Don’t call the ambulance yet. Let him understand what betrayal costs.”
Suddenly, the recording ended.
Samuel stared at me.
Before either of us spoke, the front door slammed downstairs.
A voice called from the hallway.
“Daniel?”
It was Mom.
May you like
She had come back.
And according to the security screen, she was carrying a gun.
