Chương 5
“What happened?”
“You sent Claire an email.”
A pause.
“What email?”
“About me.”
Another pause.
Longer.
“Daniel.”
“Did you write something about being concerned about my behavior with Eli?”
Jenna exhaled.
“Where did you get that?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Because I don’t know what Claire showed you.”
His grip tightened around the phone.
“She showed me the email.”
“Daniel, listen to me.”
“No, you listen to me.”
His voice rose, and he immediately saw Eli flinch from the living room.
He lowered it.
“I came home and found my son afraid of Claire.”
The silence on the other end changed.
“What?”
“He said there was a man here.”
Jenna stopped breathing for a second.
“What man?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Daniel, you need to leave that house.”
The words hit him harder than he expected.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know what Claire is involved in.”
Daniel looked toward the kitchen.
Claire was standing there watching him.
Not angry.
Waiting.
“What does that mean?”
Jenna lowered her voice.
“Did she tell you about the man who contacted Dad before he died?”
Daniel froze.
The hallway suddenly felt colder.
“No.”
“Then she didn’t tell you everything.”
His hand tightened around the phone.
“Jenna.”
“I didn’t want to tell you until I knew.”
“Knew what?”
There was a pause.
A hesitation that sounded exactly like Claire’s.
“Whether it was connected.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Connected to what?”
Jenna breathed in.
“Your father’s missing files.”
Daniel looked back at the living room.
At Eli.
At Claire.
At the house where he had once believed every problem had an explanation.
“What files?” he asked.
But Jenna did not answer immediately.
And in that silence, Daniel understood something he had not wanted to admit.
Everyone had been keeping pieces of the same story.
He was the only person who had not known there was a story at all.
The only sound in the house was the faint hum of the refrigerator and the quiet breathing of a child who had heard too much.
“Jenna,” Daniel said, forcing his voice to stay level, “tell me what files you’re talking about.”
“I can’t do this over the phone.”
“Why?”
“Because if I’m wrong, I make things worse.”
Daniel looked at Claire.
She was still standing near the kitchen table, but she no longer looked like someone defending herself.
She looked like someone waiting for a door to open.
“I’m already in the middle of worse,” he said.
Jenna sighed.
“Your dad kept records.”
“Records of what?”
“Things he was working on before he got sick.”
“My dad was a mechanic.”
“He was more than that.”
Daniel almost interrupted, but something stopped him.
His father had always been difficult to understand.
He was a man who could rebuild an engine from memory but refused to talk about his own feelings.
He kept every receipt in labeled folders but never explained why he stayed awake until three in the morning sitting alone in the garage.
Daniel had spent years thinking his father was just stubborn.
Maybe he had been wrong.
“What kind of records?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You don’t know?”
“I saw some of them.”
“When?”
“After the funeral.”
Daniel looked toward the staircase.
The house felt smaller with every answer.
“You went through Dad’s things?”
“I was helping Mom.”
“And you found something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Jenna was quiet.
Then she said, “A notebook.”
Daniel waited.
“That’s it?”
“It wasn’t a normal notebook.”
“What does that mean?”
“It had names.”
The word settled heavily.
“Names of who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re telling me my father kept a notebook with names and you never told me?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
He hated those words.
Everyone used them when they had already decided he could not handle the truth.
“From what?”
“From getting pulled into something you didn’t understand.”
A bitter laugh escaped him.
“Jenna, I’m standing in my house while my son tells me a stranger showed him my dead father’s watch.”
“I know.”
The calmness in her voice bothered him.
“You know?”
“I know because I saw the watch.”
Daniel stopped.
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
His grip tightened around the phone.
“Where?”
“With Claire.”
Daniel turned toward her.
Claire looked down.
The movement was small.
But it was enough.
“You saw it here?”
“No.”
Jenna’s voice lowered.
“I saw it when I came over.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Claire told me she was handling it.”
Daniel stared at Claire.
“What does that mean?”
Claire finally spoke.
“Daniel.”
“No.”
He held up his hand.
“I need to hear this.”
Claire looked exhausted.
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You knew Jenna saw the watch.”
“Yes.”
“You knew about my father’s files.”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
Claire swallowed.
“I was trying to figure out what was real.”
Daniel felt anger rise, but beneath it was something worse.
A feeling that he had been standing outside his own life, watching everyone else decide what he was allowed to know.
“Why would you involve Eli?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why was he there?”
“He walked into the room.”
“While you were talking to this man?”
Claire looked away.
Daniel saw it.
The hesitation.
The memory she did not want to revisit.
“What happened?”
Claire sat down slowly.
“The man came back.”
“When?”
“The day Eli was absent from school.”
Daniel looked at the paper again.
“Why?”
“He wanted something.”
“What?”
“He thought I had it.”
“Had what?”
Claire rubbed her palms together.
“The notebook.”
Daniel looked at her.
“You have my father’s notebook?”
“No.”
“Then why would he think that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Claire.”
“I don’t know.”
Her voice cracked.
“I swear to you, Daniel, I don’t know.”
The sincerity in her voice made the situation harder, not easier.
A lie would have given him something solid.
Fear was harder to fight.
Daniel walked to the living room window.
May you like
Outside, the neighborhood looked exactly the same.
A porch light across the street flickered.
