Chương 5
There were eleven missed calls.
Most were from numbers I did not recognize.
One was from my cousin Emily.
The last message was from her.
Please call me.
It’s about your dad.
I stared at it.
Samantha noticed.
“Do you want to answer?”
“No.”
The word came quickly.
Then I felt guilty.
Emily was not my father.
She had always been kind.
She brought soup after Lucas died.
She sat on my couch and cried with me.
But grief had made every new conversation feel dangerous.
Everyone wanted something.
Everyone had an opinion.
Everyone had a version of what I should do.
“I don’t know who is safe anymore.”
Samantha looked at me.
“That is a reasonable thing to feel.”
The nurse entered a moment later.
“Good news.”
I looked up.
The nurse smiled.
“Your daughter is doing great.”
My breath caught.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
She checked the monitor.
“Your body reacted to the stress, but she’s stable.”
Daughter.
The word still felt impossible.
I had spent months saying it.
Our daughter.
Lucas’s daughter.
But hearing someone else say it made reality sharper.
The nurse smiled.
“You need to rest.”
After she left, Samantha packed the documents back into her folder.
“I’m going to file for an emergency protection order regarding the house.”
I looked at her.
“Can he still sell it?”
“Not if we move quickly.”
“What about my father?”
Samantha paused.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether he actually believed he had permission.”
I looked at her.
“He didn’t.”
“Then we need proof.”
I thought about the folder.
The documents.
His confidence.
“Where did he get those papers?”
“That is the question.”
A strange feeling moved through me.
Something small.
Something I could not explain.
“He had been inside before.”
Samantha looked up.
“What?”
“Before today.”
“When?”
“Months ago.”
I searched through memories.
Lucas opening the door.
My father walking through the house.
Charles asking where Lucas kept financial records.
I had thought it was curiosity.
Maybe it was not.
“Lucas knew.”
Samantha nodded slowly.
“Maybe.”
“No.”
I looked at the letter again.
“He knew.”
The room became quiet.
I remembered the night before the accident.
The last normal night.
Lucas had stood in the hallway holding a folder.
I had asked him what it was.
He said, “Nothing you need to worry about.”
At the time, I was annoyed.
I told him I hated when he decided what I could handle.
He apologized.
Then he kissed my stomach.
“Soon you’ll have someone else bossing you around.”
I smiled.
“You mean the baby?”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“Your daughter.”
I cried then.
I cried because I missed him.
I cried because I had almost forgotten his voice.
And I cried because I finally understood why his last weeks had been different.
He was preparing.
Not because he expected to leave.
Because he expected someone to hurt me if he did.
A knock came at the door.
I turned.
A deputy stood there.
“Mrs. Gallagher?”
“Yes?”
“We need to ask you a few questions about what happened at the house.”
Samantha stood.
“I’ll stay.”
The deputy nodded.
“That’s fine.”
He opened his notebook.
“Did your father have access to the home before today?”
I looked at Samantha.
Then back at him.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He had an emergency key.”
The deputy wrote something down.
“Did you give him permission to enter?”
I hesitated.
The old instinct appeared.
Protect him.
Make it smaller.
Avoid making things worse.
Then I remembered the porch.
The cold wood under my hands.
Courtney laughing.
My father looking at Lucas’s office instead of me.
“No.”
The deputy looked up.
“No?”
“No.”
I swallowed.
“He had permission years ago.”
The words felt heavier than I expected.
“But not anymore.”
The deputy wrote that down.
“Did you tell him that?”
I looked at the window.
Outside, the sun was setting.
A normal sunset.
A normal evening.
A world that did not care that mine had split open.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Today.”
The deputy closed his notebook.
“Thank you.”
As he turned to leave, I stopped him.
“Deputy?”
“Yes?”
“My father brought documents.”
He waited.
“I think he believes they are real.”
The deputy nodded.
“That will be part of the investigation.”
After he left, Samantha gathered her things.
“You should sleep.”
“I don’t think I can.”
She smiled sadly.
“Neither did Lucas.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“When he was worried, he cleaned.”
I almost smiled.
“He hated cleaning.”
“He hated admitting he was stressed.”
That was true.
I pictured him organizing tools in the garage whenever work became overwhelming.
Not because the tools needed organizing.
Because he needed something he could control.
Samantha reached the door.
“Victoria.”
I looked up.
“Your father’s biggest mistake was thinking Lucas left you powerless.”
The door closed softly behind her.
I sat alone with my daughter’s heartbeat filling the room.
And for the first time since Lucas died, I did not feel abandoned.
I felt like I had been handed something.
Not an inheritance.
Not money.
Not a house.
A choice.
The next morning, I would stop trying to survive what Charles Baldwin had done.
I would start finding out why he thought he could do it.
The next morning, I woke up before the nurse came in.
For a few seconds, I did not know where I was.
The room was dim.
The chair beside the bed was empty.
The small plastic cup of water on the table reflected the early morning light.
Then I felt the tightness in my chest.
Not pain.
Something heavier.
The memory returned slowly.
The porch.
My father’s hand.
The hospital.
Lucas’s letter.
I placed my hand over my stomach.
“Good morning,” I whispered.
The baby moved.
It was such a small thing.
A tiny movement that nobody else would have noticed.
But it reminded me that my life had not ended when Lucas’s did.
It had changed.
That was different.
The nurse came in a few minutes later.
“You slept.”
“Barely.”
May you like
“That counts.”
She checked the monitor and smiled.
