Chương 3
The third time, his stomach tightened because he remembered the woman who had delivered the ashes.
Mara Voss.
His brother Ethan's closest friend.
The person who had stood beside Daniel at the funeral and cried harder than anyone else.
The person who had told him she was sorry he had to lose the only family member who still knew him.
Daniel sat down without meaning to.
The chair rolled backward and struck the filing cabinet behind him.
For a few seconds, he listened to the empty office.
The city outside his window was beginning to wake up.
A delivery truck groaned somewhere below.
A person laughed on the sidewalk.
A train moved through the distance with the same dull sound it made every morning.
The world had continued while Daniel's past had quietly walked back through his door.
He folded the paper and placed it inside a plastic evidence sleeve.
Then he stared at his computer screen.
His first instinct was to search for answers.
His second instinct was to delete the entire night from his memory.
The second instinct had always been stronger.
Daniel had spent eleven years learning how to live around questions he could not answer.
He had learned not to mention Ethan at family gatherings.
He had learned not to visit the highway where the accident happened.
He had learned to stop looking at old photographs because every happy memory eventually became a reminder of the last one.
But the envelope had changed something.
It had turned grief into a problem.
And problems were easier for Daniel than pain.
At 7:30, his assistant Lena Park arrived carrying two coffees and a stack of documents.
She stopped when she saw him sitting in the dark.
“You look terrible,” she said.
Daniel almost laughed.
It was the first normal thing anyone had said to him all morning.
“Good morning to you too.”
“I mean it as a medical observation, not an insult.”
“You are not a doctor.”
“No, but I have eyes.”
She placed the coffee on his desk and looked around.
Lena noticed details most people missed.
That was why Daniel had hired her three years earlier.
She remembered dates, inconsistencies, small changes in people's behavior.
She also had a habit of asking questions at exactly the wrong moment.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
She looked at him.
Daniel hated that look.
It was not suspicion.
It was disappointment.
“You always say nothing when something is clearly something.”
“I had a rough night.”
“That is different.”
“What is?”
“Rough nights involve bad sleep.”
She pointed toward the damaged envelope near the edge of his desk.
“That looks like a crime scene.”
Daniel covered it with a folder.
Too late.
Lena had already seen his expression change.
“Who sent that?”
“No one.”
“Daniel.”
He looked away.
She lowered her voice.
“I am not asking because I am curious.”
“That is exactly why you are asking.”
“No.”
She paused.
“I am asking because the last time you looked like this, you spent six weeks barely eating after the investigation into Ethan's accident was reopened.”
Daniel hated hearing his brother's name spoken casually.
Not because Lena was wrong.
Because she was one of the few people who remembered how badly he had fallen apart.
“I can handle it.”
“I did not say you couldn't.”
The answer irritated him because it was careful.
Lena was always careful.
She never pushed directly.
She waited until people pushed themselves.
Daniel picked up his coffee and realized it had already gone cold.
“There is something I need to check.”
“That means you are about to do something alone that you should probably not do alone.”
“I work better alone.”
“That is what people say when they do not want anyone around when they are making terrible decisions.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
“You have been watching too many detective shows.”
“You have been acting like someone in one.”
The office door opened before Daniel could respond.
Their receptionist, Claire, stood there holding a printed message.
“Daniel, someone called asking for you.”
“Who?”
“She would not give her name.”
“What did she say?”
Claire looked uncomfortable.
“She said you would know what this was about.”
Daniel felt the room become smaller.
“What else?”
“She said she was sorry about Ethan.”
Lena stopped moving.
Daniel looked at the clock.
For a moment, he considered ignoring it.
He considered pretending he had not heard.
That was the version of himself he had built for years.
The man who survived by leaving certain doors closed.
But someone had already opened this one.
“Did she leave a number?”
Claire handed him the paper.
The number was handwritten.
Daniel recognized the handwriting before he reached the last digit.
It matched the note.
He did not call immediately.
That was the part of him that had kept him alive professionally.
The part that checked facts before trusting emotions.
He copied the number into a separate device.
He searched the office records.
Nothing.
He checked public databases.
Nothing.
He searched old case files.
Still nothing.
Lena watched him work without interrupting.
After ten minutes, she finally spoke.
“You are going to call her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Daniel stared at the note.
Because he needed to know.
Because Ethan's name had been sitting in a grave for eleven years.
Because someone had just placed a question in his hands and expected him to be afraid of the answer.
Instead, he said the only thing that felt honest.
“Because if this is a lie, I need to know who is lying.”
“And if it is not?”
Daniel looked at the photograph sitting beside his monitor.
It showed him and Ethan at a baseball game when they were younger.
Ethan was smiling at the camera.
Daniel was looking away because he had been embarrassed by the ridiculous foam finger on his hand.
He had forgotten that Ethan kept the picture.
May you like
He had forgotten how much his brother laughed that day.
“If it is not,” Daniel said quietly, “then I need to know what really happened.”
