Chapter 4 - The Box Beneath My Mother's BedGrant finally answered at 11:26 p.m.
His voice was strained, and there was wind in the background.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Somewhere I can think.”
“That's not an address.”
“Still giving orders, Rebecca?”
“Only when people ignore three calls and disappear after their credentials are used to access a classified archive.”
The silence that followed told me enough.
“You know about the file,” I said.
“I know someone contacted me this afternoon.”
“Who?”
“A man who claimed to be an old colleague. He knew things about Black Lantern that he shouldn't have known.”
“Did you open the archive?”
“No.”
“Were your credentials used?”
“Yes.”
“Then someone has compromised your account.”
“I figured that out when two men appeared outside my house.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“Are you safe?”
“For the moment.”
“Send me your location.”
“Not yet. I need to tell you something first.”
“Uncle Grant, I don't have time for riddles.”
“Then stop treating this like an operation and listen to me like family.”
I closed my eyes.
That was precisely what I had avoided for eighteen years.
“Go ahead.”
“Your father wasn't always the man you think he is.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“That's an optimistic opening.”
“He wasn't born cruel. He became afraid, and he turned that fear into control.”
“That doesn't excuse anything.”
“No. It doesn't.”
For a moment, I heard only the wind.
“Rebecca, when you were eighteen, Daniel contacted me. He asked me to convince you not to join the Army.”
I stared at the road ahead.
“You knew?”
“I knew he was against it. I didn't know what he had done with your application until much later.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him it was your life.”
“And he listened?”
“No. He told me you would come home within a year, ashamed and broke. He said you needed someone to stop you before you made a mistake you couldn't undo.”
I swallowed.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I didn't know he had intercepted the acceptance letter. I thought he was simply being a difficult father. By the time I understood the truth, you were already in training.”
“That's convenient.”
“It's the truth.”
I wanted to believe him. That was what frightened me.
Grant continued.
“There was another reason Daniel was worried about you leaving. At the time, he was working for a logistics company that handled military contracts. It wasn't a glamorous job. He processed inventories, personnel forms, and transport documentation.”
“I thought he was working at the warehouse.”
“He told people that. It was easier than explaining the contract.”
“What did he do there?”
“I don't know everything. But I remember a disagreement between him and one of the company's directors. Your father believed the company was using information it shouldn't have had.”
I sat down on the edge of my bed.
“Then why did he try to stop me from joining the Army?”
“Because he was frightened. I think he believed that if you entered the military, you might discover what he had seen. Or perhaps he was simply ashamed that his daughter had the courage to pursue a life he didn't understand.”
“Those are two very different explanations.”
“I know.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“Where did he keep the documents?”
Grant was quiet.
“What documents?”
“Anything related to the contract. The acceptance letter. The missing statement. Whatever he hid.”
“I don't know.”
I thought of my childhood bedroom at my parents' house. The drawers Dad had emptied when I left. The photographs my mother had taken down after he complained that they made the hallway look cluttered.
Then I remembered the small wooden box that had belonged to my grandmother.
It had been kept beneath my mother's bed since I was a teenager.
I had used it for old letters and school certificates. When I moved away, I assumed the contents had been thrown out.
“I'm going to my mother's house,” I said.
“Rebecca, don't go alone.”
“I'm not planning to.”
I contacted the security officer assigned to the inquiry and arranged for a discreet escort. By midnight, I was standing on my parents' porch with my mother opening the door in a bathrobe.
She looked exhausted.
“Your father is asleep,” she whispered.
“That's fine. I need to look for something.”
“Rebecca, please. Not tonight.”
“Mom, someone has accessed a classified file connected to a mission I was part of. Uncle Grant's credentials have been compromised, and Dad may know something about the original investigation.”
Her face drained of color.
“You said this had nothing to do with us.”
“I never said that.”
She looked over her shoulder toward the dark hallway.
Then she stepped aside.
We went upstairs without speaking. My old bedroom had become a storage room, but the window still faced the backyard. The same faded curtains hung beside the frame. A stack of Tyler's old boxes occupied the closet.
Mother knelt beside her bed and pulled out the wooden chest.
I recognized the brass latch immediately.
She placed it on the floor.
“I kept this because I couldn't bring myself to throw it away,” she said.
Inside were school certificates, photographs, and several envelopes with my name written across them.
Some were unopened.
Others had been opened and folded again.
I picked up the first envelope. It was dated three months after I began my initial training.
The letter was from me.
I remembered writing it. I had described the exhausting schedule, the friendships forming between recruits, and the moment a trainer told me I had passed a demanding evaluation.
At the bottom, I had written: I know Dad doesn't believe in me, but I hope one day he'll be proud.
My hands began to shake.
“What happened to these?”
Mother sat back on her heels.
“Your father said you were sending them to make us feel guilty.”
I stared at her.
“He told us you didn't want to hear from us. He said responding would encourage you to keep arguing.”
“You believed him?”
“I wanted to believe that you were safe. It was easier than believing he was lying.”
I opened another envelope.
Then another.
There were seventeen letters.
Seventeen pieces of my life, returned to me unopened or unread, while my family convinced themselves that I had abandoned them.
At the bottom of the box lay a thick manila envelope. It had no postage stamp and no return address.
My name was written on the front in handwriting I didn't recognize.
Inside was a photocopy of a military administrative form.
The signature at the bottom belonged to Daniel Hayes.
The date was eighteen years earlier.
And beside the signature was a handwritten sentence that made my blood turn cold:
Subject has been advised to withdraw from military service due to concerns regarding family stability and potential exposure of sensitive contractor records.
I read it twice.
Then I looked at my mother.
“Mom, what is this?”
She stared at the page as if it had begun to burn.
“I've never seen that before.”
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Someone was standing outside my old bedroom.
Then my father's voice came through the darkness.
“Put that document down, Rebecca.”
May you like
He had not been asleep.
And from the sound of his voice, he had been waiting eighteen years for this exact moment.
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