Chương 4
She folded the letter once and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans.
"One second."
Her voice sounded calmer than she felt.
That was something she had learned after years of working emergency calls at the county dispatch center.
People always assumed the calm voice meant the person was calm.
Usually it meant the opposite.
When she opened the door, two officers stood on the porch.
The older one removed his hat.
"Mara, I'm Officer Bennett."
He glanced down at a small notebook.
"We need to ask you a few questions about your father."
The words landed heavier than she expected.
"My father died six months ago."
"I know."
The officer looked uncomfortable.
Not guilty.
Not nervous.
Just uncomfortable.
That bothered her more.
"What happened?"
Bennett looked toward the driveway, where a patrol vehicle sat behind her old blue pickup truck.
"Someone reported that a box of documents may have been removed from this property without permission."
Mara stared at him.
"What kind of documents?"
"We're trying to determine that."
"Who reported it?"
The officer hesitated.
It was only half a second.
Most people would not notice.
Mara noticed everything.
"Mr. Daniel Reed."
The name meant nothing at first.
Then it did.
Her father's former business partner.
The man who had not attended the funeral.
The man who had sent flowers three days late with a note that contained only his signature.
Mara stepped back from the doorway.
"That doesn't make sense."
"That's what we're trying to understand."
She looked over her shoulder toward the workshop.
The loose floorboard was still visible from where she stood.
A small piece of the past she had accidentally opened.
"Can I ask why you think I took anything?"
Bennett's expression changed slightly.
"Because your name is on the transfer request."
"What transfer request?"
"The one filed two days ago."
Mara felt the air leave her chest.
"I didn't file anything."
The officer studied her face.
"You should know someone used your information."
She almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the alternative was admitting that the strange feeling crawling up her arms was fear.
"Used my information for what?"
Bennett closed the notebook.
"That's what we need to find out."
After they left, Mara remained on the porch for several minutes.
Her neighbor across the street watered the same patch of grass for nearly five minutes without moving.
She knew the woman was pretending not to watch.
Everyone in town watched.
That was one of the reasons Mara had avoided coming back.
People here remembered everything.
They remembered who got divorced.
Who lost jobs.
Who drove home after midnight.
Who looked unhappy at the grocery store.
Small towns did not forget.
They simply waited until someone gave them a reason to talk.
Inside the workshop, Mara locked the door behind her.
The letter in her pocket suddenly felt heavier.
She sat on the old wooden stool beside her father's workbench.
The same stool she used to climb onto as a child when she wanted to see what he was repairing.
Back then, she believed her father could fix anything.
Broken radios.
Old clocks.
Cracked chairs.
Even people, maybe.
She unfolded the letter again.
The handwriting was not her father's.
She knew that immediately.
Her father wrote slowly, with careful block letters because he said cursive made people hide their mistakes.
This handwriting was rushed.
Uneven.
Like someone had been afraid they would run out of time.
Mara,
If you found this, then Daniel finally decided the past was worth reopening.
I need you to know I never wanted you involved.
I thought keeping you away was protecting you.
I was wrong.
She stopped reading.
Her first instinct was to throw the letter away.
That surprised her.
She had spent six months searching for answers about her father's last years.
Why had he become distant?
Why had he stopped talking about work?
Why had he started locking this workshop every night even though no one had entered the property in years?
Now that an answer appeared, part of her wanted to destroy it.
Because answers changed things.
Before, she could miss her father.
After, she might have to judge him.
The old refrigerator in the corner clicked on.
The sound made her look up.
For a moment she was eight years old again, sitting on the floor while her father fixed a broken lamp and pretending she understood what he was doing.
"You know what most people do wrong?" he had asked her.
She had looked up.
"What?"
"They try to fix things before they understand why they broke."
She had laughed because she thought it was just about the lamp.
Years later, she wondered if he had meant himself.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number appeared.
Do not trust Daniel Reed.
Mara stared at the screen.
A second message arrived.
Your father tried to tell the truth.
Someone stopped him.
She immediately typed back.
Who is this?
The three dots appeared.
Then disappeared.
She waited.
Nothing.
She hated that she cared.
She hated that some part of her already believed the message.
A normal person would have called the police.
A careful person would have ignored it.
Mara did neither.
She walked back to the workbench and looked at the letter again.
The next line waited beneath her thumb.
Daniel knows about the account.
He knows what your father hid.
He knows you are the only person who can prove it.
The word account bothered her.
Her father had never been good with money.
That was one of the few things everyone agreed on.
He kept old receipts in coffee cans.
He forgot passwords.
He once paid a bill three months late because he put the envelope in a drawer and forgot it existed.
The idea that he had hidden an account seemed impossible.
But the idea that Daniel Reed was lying felt strangely familiar.
May you like
Mara folded the letter and put it beside her phone.
Then she did something she promised herself she would not do.
