Chapter 9 - My Childhood HomeMy mother's house stood at the end of a quiet street lined with bare trees and brick homes.
It was smaller than I remembered.
The white paint had begun peeling around the windows. Ivy climbed one side of the porch, and the front steps creaked beneath our weight.
But the house still smelled faintly of cedar, old books, and the lavender soap my mother used to keep beside the bathroom sink.
I had not entered it in nearly a decade.
After my father supposedly died, Adrian had encouraged me to sell it.
He said the house carried too many painful memories. He suggested that we use the money to fund Sophie's education and donate some of it to my mother's favorite charity.
I had agreed.
Then, several months later, Adrian told me the sale had been finalized.
Apparently, he had lied.
The key Eleanor carried opened the front door.
Inside, white dust covered the furniture, and pale rectangles marked the walls where family photographs had once hung.
The living room was empty.
The kitchen was empty.
But the old grandfather clock still stood in the hallway.
My father had repaired it himself when I was twelve.
I remembered sitting on the staircase while he worked, handing him screws and asking questions he rarely answered fully.
“Some things are worth keeping,” he had told me.
At the time, I thought he was talking about the clock.
Now I wasn't sure.
Daniel checked the ground floor while Eleanor and I went upstairs.
My childhood bedroom looked almost exactly as it had when I left for college.
The blue wallpaper remained. My old desk stood beside the window. A small bookshelf held several childhood novels, their pages yellowed with age.
And on the bed lay a stuffed rabbit.
Sophie's rabbit.
I recognized its damaged left ear and the faded blue ribbon tied around its neck.
Someone had placed it carefully on the pillow.
I walked toward it.
Beneath the rabbit was a folded note.
Your daughter loved you.
I stopped breathing.
The handwriting wasn't my father's.
It was Adrian's.
I read the message again.
Then I turned toward the door.
“He was here.”
Eleanor came closer.
“Claire—”
“He came into my childhood bedroom. He took Sophie's rabbit and left it here.”
My hands shook.
“He knows where I am.”
Daniel appeared at the end of the hallway.
“We need to move.”
“Not yet.”
“Claire, we don't have time.”
I held up the note.
“Look at this.”
He read it, then examined the bedroom.
“This could be intended to frighten you. Or it could mean someone wants you to believe Adrian found the house.”
“It's his handwriting.”
“Which doesn't prove he was physically here.”
I turned toward the window.
Across the street, a black sedan stood beside a parked delivery truck.
Its headlights were off.
The driver's window was open.
And a man sat behind the wheel, watching the house.
Daniel drew his weapon.
“Get away from the window.”
A bullet struck the wall beside the curtains.
I ducked.
The sound shattered the silence, and Eleanor screamed.
Daniel pulled us away from the bedroom while another gunshot hit the upstairs window.
We stumbled down the staircase.
The front door burst open.
A man entered the hallway with his gun raised.
Daniel tackled him before he could aim.
They struck the wall, knocking a framed photograph to the floor. I heard a grunt, the crash of furniture, and the sharp metallic sound of a weapon sliding across the hardwood.
Eleanor grabbed my arm.
“Out the back!”
We raced through the kitchen, crossed the small garden, and climbed over a fence into the neighboring yard.
Daniel caught up with us moments later, breathing hard.
He had a cut above his eyebrow and blood on his sleeve.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“No.”
“What happened to the man?”
“He won't follow us.”
I didn't ask what that meant.
We reached the street behind the house and climbed into a car Daniel had parked there earlier.
As we drove away, I looked back at the house.
My mother's house.
The place where I had learned to ride a bicycle, where my father had taught me to read financial statements for fun, where my mother used to sing while preparing Sunday dinner.
Now someone had turned it into another crime scene.
I pressed Sophie's stuffed rabbit against my chest.
Then I noticed something unusual.
The ribbon around its neck had been tied differently.
I loosened the knot.
A tiny metal capsule slipped into my palm.
Inside was a rolled strip of paper.
The handwriting was my father's.
The original ledger is not a book.
It is a testimony.
The truth exists in three parts. One is held by the dead. One is held by the guilty. One is held by the child.
I read the words twice.
Then I looked at Eleanor.
“What does the child mean?”
She was silent.
“Eleanor.”
She shook her head.
“I don't know.”
I studied the note again.
One is held by the dead.
Could that mean my father?
Or someone else who had died?
One is held by the guilty.
Samuel Cross?
Adrian?
Marco?
One is held by the child.
I thought of Sophie.
My daughter had loved recording little videos on her tablet. She filmed herself singing, dancing, pretending to be a news reporter, and interviewing the family dog whenever we visited my cousin.
She had once told me she was going to become a detective.
“I'm going to find out everybody's secrets,” she had announced, wearing a plastic magnifying glass around her neck.
Adrian had laughed.
“Then I suppose your mother and I should be careful.”
Sophie had nodded solemnly.
“Very careful.”
I felt a painful knot form in my throat.
Her tablet had been recovered from the crash.
The screen had been cracked.
The hospital had returned it with her other belongings, and I had packed it into the bag before leaving home.
I opened the bag.
The damaged tablet was still there.
I pressed the power button.
Nothing happened.
Daniel glanced at it in the rearview mirror.
“Don't connect it to a network. If the data is still intact, we should examine it in an isolated environment.”
“Can you?”
“Probably.”
He took the tablet and placed it inside a protective case.
“We'll need someone who understands the storage system.”
I looked at the note again.
One is held by the child.
For the first time, I considered the possibility that Sophie had unknowingly captured something that the most powerful people in Chicago had spent years hiding.
A video.
A voice recording.
A photograph.
Something small and innocent.
Something no adult had thought to look for.
Then my phone rang.
Adrian.
I answered without speaking.
For several seconds, neither of us said anything.
Then I heard his voice.
“Claire.”
He sounded exhausted.
“Don't call me.”
“Please listen.”
“No.”
“I know someone has been following you.”
I laughed without humor.
“Someone? Your men?”
“Not all of them are mine.”
The words caught me off guard.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Samuel Cross is no longer following my instructions.”
I gripped the phone.
“Were you ever in control of him?”
Adrian exhaled.
“I thought I was.”
“That seems to be a recurring problem.”
“Claire, I need you to understand something.”
“Then start by explaining why you drove our daughter on a mountain road with a woman you were having an affair with.”
Silence.
“I made a terrible mistake.”
“A mistake is forgetting to buy milk. You drove too fast because your mistress demanded it.”
“I know.”
“No, you don't.”
“I know Sophie is dead because of me.”
The admission was so unexpected that I couldn't speak.
Then Adrian said, “But I didn't arrange the trip that day. I didn't know what Samuel intended.”
I stared out the window.
“Why did you say she wasn't meant to stay?”
He was silent for so long that I thought he had ended the call.
Finally, he whispered, “Because I was trying to convince myself that her death wasn't my fault.”
My throat tightened.
“And did it work?”
“No.”
For the first time, he sounded like the man I had once married.
Broken.
Afraid.
Human.
But I had learned that the sound of remorse was not the same thing as proof of change.
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Did you know the brakes were defective?”
“Yes.”
The answer struck me like a physical blow.
“Then why did you drive?”
“Because Samuel told me he had your father.”
My breath stopped.
“What?”
“He said Thomas had been captured. He told me that if I didn't bring the documents to the airport, your father would die.”
I pressed a hand against my mouth.
“And you believed him?”
“I had no way to know whether he was bluffing.”
“So you risked our daughter's life?”
“I thought I could get everyone out safely.”
“You thought you could control everything.”
He said nothing.
I closed my eyes.
“Adrian, did you know Sophie was going to be in danger?”
“No.”
“Did you know Vivian had arranged the vehicle modification?”
“I learned that after the crash.”
“From whom?”
“Marco.”
I looked at Eleanor.
She was watching me, her face pale.
“Then why did you protect Vivian?”
Adrian's voice changed.
“Because she had the original phone recording.”
“What recording?”
“The conversation between Samuel and me. The one about the trip.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Then why hasn't she turned it over?”
“She tried.”
“Who stopped her?”
Adrian didn't answer.
I heard a door close on his end of the call.
Then a man's voice spoke in the background.
A voice I recognized from the wedding.
Samuel Cross.
“Adrian, you've made this worse than it needed to be.”
The call ended.
I stared at the blank screen.
Then Daniel spoke from the driver's seat.
“Claire, we have a serious problem.”
I looked up.
The car had stopped beneath an overpass.
A black SUV was parked directly in front of us.
Two men stood beside it.
And between them, wearing a familiar gray suit and holding a leather briefcase, stood Samuel Cross.
He smiled as though we had arranged to meet for coffee.
“Claire,” he called through the windshield. “I've been trying to reach you.”
Then he raised one hand.
In it was Sophie's missing pink hair clip.
May you like
The one she had worn on the last morning of her life.
“Your father has something you need,” Samuel continued. “But before you can have it, we need to discuss what your husband did on that mountain road.”
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