Chương 9
Daniel looked at her.
Then at Anna.
His anger collapsed.
“I’m not saying mine was worse.”
Anna looked down.
“I know.”
“I’m saying you weren’t the only person who disappeared.”
Silence.
A siren moved somewhere below the apartment windows.
Anna picked at the edge of a paper napkin.
After a long time, she said, “Did you really get fingerprint kits for Christmas?”
Daniel rubbed his face.
“Not technically Christmas. They arrived around Christmas.”
“That’s insane.”
“Thank you.”
Margaret said weakly, “They were recommended.”
Both children looked at her.
She raised her hands.
“I understand now that it was insane.”
Anna laughed first.
Daniel followed.
The argument did not disappear.
But something changed.
For the first time, Anna began asking Daniel questions about his life.
His work.
His divorce.
Why he had never remarried.
Why he drove an old SUV when he could afford anything he wanted.
“Because it works.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It is literally the reason.”
“You sound like Dad.”
Daniel looked at her.
“You remember him saying that?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I guessed.”
They laughed.
Those moments accumulated.
So did harder ones.
The prosecution discovered Victor had contacted Raymond Hale, Thomas’s brother, four years before Anna was found.
That changed everything.
Raymond was sixty-seven and living in Florida.
He initially denied knowing Victor.
Phone records proved otherwise.
Then he admitted they had spoken but claimed Victor was trying to sell information.
Then investigators found bank transfers.
Three payments.
$15,000.
$20,000.
$20,000.
All from a consulting company controlled by Raymond.
Margaret flew to Florida against the prosecutor’s advice.
Daniel went with her because he knew she would go anyway.
They met Raymond in the patio room of his condominium.
He looked old.
That shocked Margaret.
She still thought of him as Thomas’s younger brother, forever forty-something, tan, vain, always smelling faintly of expensive cologne.
Now his hands trembled when he poured water.
Margaret did not sit.
“You paid him.”
Raymond looked at Daniel.
“Can we not start like this?”
Margaret almost laughed.
“How should we start?”
“I was trying to determine whether he was legitimate.”
“For four years?”
“He kept sending things.”
“What things?”
“Photographs. Stories.”
“Of Anna?”
“Maybe.”
Margaret gripped the back of a chair.
“You saw photographs of my daughter and you didn’t tell me?”
Raymond’s face tightened.
“You don’t understand what it was like back then.”
She stared.
He corrected himself.
“That came out wrong.”
Daniel said, “Pretty spectacularly.”
Raymond rubbed his forehead.
“We had people contacting us constantly. Demands. Claims. Your father was paying everyone.”
“Our father was dead.”
“I mean Thomas.”
Margaret’s voice went quiet.
“Do not call my husband your father because you’re nervous.”
Raymond looked away.
Daniel said, “Why did you pay Victor?”
Raymond took too long.
Margaret knew the answer before he gave it.
“He threatened to go public.”
“With what?”
Raymond stood.
“I need you to understand, Thomas’s estate was complicated.”
Margaret felt something cold move through her.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing criminal.”
Daniel laughed.
“That usually comes right before the criminal thing.”
Raymond snapped, “I said nothing criminal.”
Margaret stepped closer.
“What did you do?”
Raymond sat again.
After Thomas died, a trust had been created to hold a portion of assets in case Anna was ever declared alive.
Margaret knew that.
What she did not know was that Raymond, acting as one of several temporary trustees during estate litigation, had supported a petition to have Anna legally declared dead.
Margaret had opposed it.
She lost.
The ruling allowed certain holdings to be distributed.
Raymond benefited.
Not massively.
But enough.
Victor discovered this through public estate filings.
Then he contacted Raymond claiming he had found Anna.
Raymond paid him to verify the claim quietly.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I didn’t believe him.”
“You paid fifty-five thousand dollars.”
“To make him go away.”
“You paid him three times.”
“He kept coming back.”
Daniel said, “Did you ever meet Anna?”
“No.”
“Did you see her live? Video call? Anything?”
“No.”
“Did Victor send the forged letters?”
Raymond’s face changed.
Margaret saw it.
“You knew.”
“I knew he had documents.”
“You knew.”
“I didn’t know they were forged.”
“You knew he was showing her things about us.”
“I didn’t know what.”
Margaret walked toward the glass doors.
Outside, sprinklers ticked across perfect Florida grass.
For a few seconds she heard nothing else.
Then she turned.
“If you had called me four years ago, I would have found her.”
Raymond’s face crumpled.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t.”
“I would have found her.”
“He might have moved her.”
“I would have tried.”
“I was trying to protect the family.”
Margaret crossed the room and hit him.
Not as hard as she had hit Victor.
Hard enough.
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Mom.”
Raymond held his cheek.
“You can’t keep doing that.”
Margaret looked at her own hand.
For one absurd second, she almost laughed.
Then she sat.
The anger drained out of her.
What remained was worse.
“You had four years.”
Raymond’s eyes filled.
“I was scared.”
“So was she.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You chose not to know.”
That sentence eventually became central to the criminal case.
Not against Raymond for Anna’s confinement—there was insufficient evidence he knew she was being held—but for obstruction-related conduct and financial transactions investigators believed were intended to suppress Victor’s claims while estate matters remained active.
The legal outcomes took time.
Much more time than television expected.
Victor’s trial began fourteen months after Anna was found.
By then, public interest had faded.
That helped.
Anna had moved into a different apartment.
She worked twelve hours a week at a nonprofit thrift store, mostly sorting donated books.
She had gained weight.
She cut her hair to her shoulders.
She wore shoes voluntarily now, though she removed them immediately after entering any home.
She still kept food in her bedroom.
Margaret no longer commented.
The prosecutor asked Anna whether she would testify.
Anna said no.
Then yes.
Then no.
May you like
Then maybe.
Victor’s defense had every right to challenge her memory.
