Chapter 3 - Ask Your Son
The photograph was dated nineteen years before I met Daniel.
On the back, someone had written three words.
DON'T LET DANIEL KNOW.
I read them twice.
Megan took the photograph from my trembling hand.
"Who is she?"
Evelyn looked toward the house.
"Her name was Rebecca Hale."
"Was?"
"She died."
"When?"
"Twenty-two years ago."
Nothing made sense.
I was thirty-one.
The photograph showed Rebecca as a young woman, perhaps twenty-five.
She had my brown eyes.
My jawline.
Even the slight asymmetry in her smile looked familiar.
"Was she related to me?"
"I don't know."
"You brought an envelope with my name on it but don't know?"
"I found it yesterday."
Evelyn explained that she had been cleaning out a storage unit before selling an old family property. The envelope had been hidden inside a locked document case belonging to Daniel's father, Richard.
"When I saw your name, I called Daniel."
My stomach dropped.
"When?"
"Last night."
That explained the argument.
Daniel had been strange since breakfast.
Restless.
Checking his phone.
Then I found the credit-card charges.
"Did you tell him what was inside?"
"No. I told him only that I'd found something with your name on it."
Megan looked at me.
"And then this morning he hits you."
The connection was impossible to ignore.
I remembered Daniel shouting during our argument.
You don't know what you're talking about.
You don't know anything about my family.
At the time, I thought he meant the money.
Maybe he hadn't.
"What happened to Rebecca?" I asked.
Evelyn hesitated.
"She fell."
The word landed like a stone.
"Fell where?"
"Down a staircase."
"Was Richard there?"
Evelyn's silence answered me.
Megan stepped closer.
"Mrs. Mercer, you need to tell us everything."
Evelyn looked suddenly old.
"Richard had a temper."
The same phrase people used when they didn't want to use another word.
Violent.
"He never hit Daniel," she continued.
"Did he hit you?"
She looked away.
"Sometimes."
"And Rebecca?"
"I don't know."
But I saw the truth.
She suspected.
Maybe she always had.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered cautiously.
"Mrs. Mercer?"
"Yes."
"This is Officer Ruiz. Your husband has been processed. A temporary protective order can be requested today. I strongly recommend you don't return to the residence alone."
"I won't."
"There's something else."
I waited.
"Your husband asked us to retrieve medication from the house."
"What medication?"
"He says it's in the locked drawer of his office desk."
I knew the drawer.
Daniel never let me touch it.
"He specifically requested his mother retrieve it."
Evelyn looked at me when I repeated that.
Her face changed.
"No."
"What?"
"We don't go into that office."
Megan frowned.
"Why?"
Evelyn grabbed my arm, then immediately released it when she saw me flinch.
"I'm sorry."
She lowered her voice.
"Daniel kept Richard's papers."
"Where?"
"In that office."
I looked at the house.
For four years, I had walked past that door every day.
Daniel said it contained business documents.
I had never questioned him.
Officer Ruiz was still on the line.
"Can an officer come with us?" I asked.
"Yes."
Twenty minutes later, we entered the house with police supervision.
The silence felt different.
Daniel wasn't there.
Yet his presence seemed everywhere.
His shoes.
His coffee cup.
His keys.
The framed wedding portrait.
We went upstairs.
His office door was unlocked.
Inside, everything was immaculate.
Desk.
Computer.
Bookshelves.
A framed photograph of Daniel and Richard.
Evelyn stared at it.
"He worshipped his father."
I approached the desk.
The top drawer opened.
The second opened.
The bottom right drawer was locked.
"Do you have the key?" Officer Ruiz asked.
Evelyn shook her head.
I did.
I just hadn't known it.
Three months earlier, Daniel had given me a spare key ring after losing his own.
One tiny brass key had no label.
I retrieved it.
It fit.
The drawer opened.
Inside were prescription bottles.
But underneath them sat a black leather folder.
Daniel had asked for medication.
He hadn't mentioned the folder.
Officer Ruiz told us not to disturb anything potentially relevant.
She photographed the contents.
Then she lifted the folder.
Underneath was another photograph.
Rebecca.
This time she wasn't smiling.
A bruise darkened her cheek.
My stomach turned.
Evelyn made a broken sound.
There were letters beneath the photograph.
Bank statements.
A police report.
And one handwritten page.
Officer Ruiz read the first lines silently.
Then she looked at me.
"Claire, you may want to sit down."
I didn't.
"What does it say?"
She hesitated.
"It appears to be a statement Rebecca wrote shortly before her death."
"About Richard?"
"Yes."
Evelyn began crying.
I took the page.
Rebecca's handwriting was shaky.
Richard says nobody will believe me.
He says Evelyn already knows what he is and stays anyway.
I looked at Evelyn.
She covered her mouth.
The next sentence was worse.
If anything happens to me, please find my daughter.
My vision blurred.
Below that was a name.
My mother's name.
Laura Bennett.
I stared at it until the letters stopped making sense.
Rebecca Hale had known my mother.
Then I reached the final line.
May you like
And beside my mother's name was a date.
My birthday.
