Chapter 3 - WHAT HIS FATHER BURNED
For several seconds, Evan believed he had misunderstood.
“You burned it?”
Robert’s face looked gray.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His father looked toward Claire, then toward Detective Torres.
Finally he said:
“Because your mother told me there were things inside that could destroy our family.”
Evan laughed once.
It wasn’t humor.
It was disbelief.
“And you believed her?”
Robert closed his eyes.
“I wanted to.”
Those words sounded horrifyingly familiar.
Evan had spent years doing the exact same thing.
Detective Torres pulled out a chair.
“Sit down, Robert.”
He obeyed.
“What was inside the cabin?”
“I don’t know.”
“You burned an entire building without looking?”
“I looked.”
Everyone froze.
Torres leaned forward.
“What did you see?”
Robert stared at the table.
“Boxes.”
“What kind of boxes?”
“Financial records. Medical files. Photographs.”
Evan’s voice sharpened.
“Photographs of what?”
Robert’s eyes filled with shame.
“Grace.”
Claire instinctively covered her mouth.
Evan stood completely still.
Robert continued.
“There were pictures of her meeting with a lawyer. Pictures of her outside a bank. Pictures of her talking to someone near the courthouse.”
“Why would Mom have those?”
“I never asked.”
Evan slammed his palm against the table.
“Then ask yourself now!”
Claire flinched at the sound.
Evan immediately stepped back.
He hated what this house was turning him into.
Torres remained calm.
“Robert, was Grace alive when you burned the cabin?”
Robert looked at her.
“As far as I knew, no.”
“As far as you knew?”
“She had been missing for a year.”
“You told the police she drowned.”
Robert swallowed.
“Judith said Grace’s jacket had been found near the lake.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Robert’s breathing changed.
“No body was ever recovered.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Evan had attended a funeral.
He remembered a white coffin.
He remembered his mother collapsing beside it.
He remembered Robert holding him while he cried.
“You buried an empty coffin?”
Robert lowered his head.
“Yes.”
Evan stumbled backward.
Claire moved instinctively toward him but stopped halfway.
She was no longer sure whether comforting him was her responsibility.
That realization hurt him more than he expected.
Detective Torres opened Grace’s letter again.
“She told Evan to look inside the cabin. A year later, you destroyed it.”
Robert nodded.
“Judith begged me.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“She said Grace had been involved with dangerous people.”
“And you never questioned why?”
“I was grieving.”
Torres’s expression remained hard.
“Grief doesn’t explain fifteen years of silence.”
Robert looked at Claire.
“No.”
Then he whispered:
“Cowardice does.”
Outside, officers continued searching the property.
Inside, Claire suddenly pressed one hand against her stomach.
Evan noticed immediately.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Claire.”
“The baby moved.”
“You looked scared.”
She gave him a tired look.
“I am scared.”
Not because of the baby.
Because Judith was somewhere outside.
Because someone had driven her away.
Because the woman who had threatened Claire for months now knew the hidden evidence had been discovered.
Detective Torres’s phone rang.
She answered.
“Torres.”
Her expression changed.
“When?”
Silence.
“Send it to me.”
She ended the call.
“What happened?” Evan asked.
Torres looked at Claire.
“We pulled Judith’s phone records.”
Claire’s stomach tightened.
“And?”
“She called the same number thirty-seven times over the past four months.”
Robert looked confused.
“Whose number?”
Torres placed her phone on the table.
“A prepaid line.”
Evan frowned.
“That tells us nothing.”
“Not exactly.”
She opened a map.
“The phone connected repeatedly to one cellular tower.”
A location appeared thirty-eight miles outside town.
Evan leaned closer.
The place name meant nothing to him.
Claire, however, recognized it.
Her face drained.
“What?” Evan asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Claire?”
She stared at Detective Torres.
“That’s near St. Agnes.”
Torres nodded.
Robert looked between them.
“What’s St. Agnes?”
Claire answered.
“A private psychiatric facility.”
Evan frowned.
Then he remembered something from Grace’s letter.
She will say I’m unstable.
Torres pulled up a hospital record.
“Grace Mercer was admitted to St. Agnes sixteen years ago.”
Evan stopped breathing.
“That’s impossible.”
“She disappeared sixteen years ago.”
“Yes.”
Torres turned the phone toward him.
Grace’s admission date appeared on the screen.
It was three days after her supposed drowning.
Evan stared at the document.
His sister had been alive.
While he attended her funeral, she had been locked inside a psychiatric hospital less than forty miles away.
“Who admitted her?”
Torres didn’t respond immediately.
She looked at Robert.
Then at Evan.
Finally she turned the screen.
Two signatures appeared at the bottom of the commitment form.
May you like
Judith Mercer.
And Robert Mercer.
