Chương 7
“What trouble?”
“We didn't know exactly.”
My mother stood.
“Claire.”
“No.”
Claire's voice broke.
“We've done this long enough.”
She turned to me.
“Dad said Julian owed money to people connected to Victoria's family.”
I stared at her.
“What people?”
“He never gave me names.”
“Dad investigated him?”
“He didn't have to.”
My mother finally looked at me.
“Julian told him.”
A car horn sounded outside.
Marissa.
My ten minutes were gone.
I didn't care.
“When?”
“The same day he came here.”
My mother clasped her hands.
“He said leaving you had been a mistake.”
The sentence touched some old, stupid place in me before I could stop it.
I hated that too.
“He wanted me back?”
“No.”
My mother looked at the boys.
“He wanted to know if you were safe.”
That was worse.
“From what?”
“He wouldn't say.”
Claire sat beside Ethan.
“Dad thought Julian had gotten involved with something financial.”
“That's vague.”
“Because we didn't know.”
“Then why keep him away from me?”
Mom's voice dropped.
“Because your father asked Julian a very simple question.”
I waited.
“He asked whether anyone dangerous knew you were pregnant.”
Ethan stared at her.
“And?”
My mother looked at me.
“Julian said yes.”
The horn sounded again outside.
This time my phone rang.
Marissa.
I declined it.
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it's true.”
“Did Julian come back again?”
“No.”
“Did he call?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“Two days later.”
My hands were shaking now.
I pressed them against my sides.
“What did he say?”
“He said your father was right.”
“About what?”
“That he needed to stay away.”
Leo's voice was barely audible.
“Because of us?”
My mother looked at him.
“Yes.”
He recoiled as though the word had struck him.
I stepped toward him.
“Leo.”
He moved away from me.
“No.”
My phone vibrated with another message.
I looked down.
This one contained a photograph.
The image was old and grainy, taken from across a parking lot.
Julian stood beside my father.
Between them was Victoria's father, Charles Vale.
The timestamp in the lower corner read April 3, thirteen years earlier.
Under the photograph was a final line.
Julian did not abandon you the way you think he did.
I read the line three times before handing the phone to Claire.
She looked at the photograph and sat down hard beside Ethan.
My mother did not ask to see it.
That told me she had seen it before.
“Mom.”
She pressed her lips together.
“Where did that picture come from?”
“I don't know.”
“Have you seen it before?”
“Yes.”
Leo turned toward her.
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“How many years?”
“After your grandfather died.”
My chest tightened.
“Who showed it to you?”
She looked at Claire.
Claire shook her head.
“Don't look at me.”
My mother lowered herself into the chair again.
“Your father had an envelope in his desk.”
“What envelope?”
“One he told me to destroy if anything happened to him.”
I stared at her.
“And you didn't.”
“No.”
For the first time all evening, I was grateful for one of her lies.
“Where is it?”
She looked toward the hallway.
“In the basement.”
Marissa called again.
I answered.
“Ma'am, General Avery wants to know whether he should assume you've been kidnapped by your family.”
“Tell him yes.”
There was a pause.
“I cannot tell a three-star general that.”
“Then improvise.”
Another pause.
“You have twelve minutes.”
“Understood.”
I hung up.
Claire stood.
“No.”
I looked at my mother.
“You get it.”
“Elena.”
“If you're going to open thirteen years tonight, you can walk downstairs and bring back the key.”
Her face tightened.
Then she nodded and left the room.
Leo turned on me immediately.
“You still have to go?”
“Yes.”
“After this?”
“Yes.”
His laugh was sharp.
“Of course.”
“Leo.”
“You always leave when things get complicated.”
The words hurt because they were only partly unfair.
I had deployed twice before the boys turned nine.
I had missed birthdays, school conferences, one broken wrist, and the first time Ethan played trumpet badly enough to clear a room.
There had always been reasons.
Orders.
Responsibility.
The belief that loving them and leaving them temporarily could coexist.
Usually it had.
Tonight, Leo did not care about usually.
“I don't get to ignore my job because our family lied to us,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because other people depend on me.”
“So do we.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Ethan studied the floor.
I had no clean answer.
“I know.”
Leo folded his arms.
“That sounds like something people say when they're leaving anyway.”
“Yes.”
He looked surprised.
I stepped closer.
“And sometimes they're leaving anyway because two things can be true at once.”
“You could call and say no.”
“I could.”
“Then do it.”
“I won't.”
His face changed.
There it was.
The cost of telling the truth instead of dressing it as necessity.
“I hate that,” he said.
“I know.”
“No, you don't.”
“You're right.”
That stopped him.
I rarely surrendered territory so quickly.
He looked away.
“I still hate it.”
“You're allowed.”
My mother returned carrying a metal document box no larger than a shoe box.
She set it on the coffee table.
The lock had been removed years ago.
“Your father kept this behind the furnace.”
Claire gave her a look.
“That is incredibly dramatic for Dad.”
“He watched too many spy movies.”
“He fell asleep during spy movies.”
“He still liked the first twenty minutes.”
For one second, the absurdity of it softened the room.
Then my mother lifted the lid.
Inside were tax records, two old passports, a stack of photographs, and a brown envelope with my father's handwriting across the front.
ELENA.
Nothing else.
My throat tightened.
My father had printed in block capitals when he wanted something taken seriously.
He had labeled my childhood lunch boxes the same way.
I opened the envelope.
There were six pages.
Three photographs.
May you like
A photocopy of a handwritten statement.
And an old business card from a private investigator named Samuel Ortega.
