Chapter 3 - THE NIGHT MY MOTHER RAN
Once you realize an accident wasn’t an accident, everything that happened before it starts looking different.
Dominic called someone named Julian.
I called Marcy back twice.
Within twenty minutes, we knew my agency’s digital work order said Monroe Street.
Only the printed sheet in my envelope said Montrose Place.
Security footage from the agency showed someone entering the office after midnight.
Hat.
Coat.
Face hidden.
My work packet had been the only thing touched.
“That means somebody wanted me here,” I said.
Dominic’s expression had become frighteningly calm.
“Yes.”
“To clean?”
“No.”
“Good. Because that would be an unnecessarily complicated way to hire someone.”
He ignored that.
“Did Grace leave you anything?”
“Furniture. Recipes. A box of old birthday cards.”
“Keys?”
“Apparently.”
“Documents?”
“No.”
“Did she ever discuss the Vale family?”
“Never.”
That bothered him.
It bothered me more.
My mother and I had been close.
Or at least I thought we had.
She died when I was fifteen.
A car accident on an icy road in Pennsylvania.
One moment she was driving home from work.
The next, she was gone.
Dominic looked at me sharply.
“Pennsylvania?”
“Yes.”
“What town?”
“Bethlehem.”
His face changed.
“What?”
“When?”
I told him the date.
He crossed to a desk and opened a locked drawer.
From it, he removed an old file.
Inside was a newspaper clipping.
LOCAL WOMAN KILLED IN SINGLE-CAR COLLISION.
Grace Brooks.
My mother.
I stared at him.
“You knew?”
“I found this thirteen years ago.”
“You searched for her?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you find me?”
“The article said she had no surviving family.”
I felt sick.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
He showed me another page.
Someone had filed paperwork indicating I had entered state custody months before her death.
I had never entered state custody.
I had lived with my aunt.
“Who did this?”
“I don’t know.”
The kitchen suddenly felt too small.
Dominic’s voice softened.
“Elena.”
“What?”
“There’s more.”
I hated those words almost as much as I hated “she had reasons.”
He placed an insurance investigator’s report in front of me.
My mother’s brakes had failed.
Not because of ice.
The brake line had been cut.
I read that sentence three times.
“No.”
“The official report called it road damage.”
“You think someone killed her?”
“I think somebody wanted everyone to stop asking questions about Grace Brooks.”
My eyes burned.
I pushed away from the table.
Dominic moved instinctively toward me, then stopped before touching me.
That restraint mattered.
More than it should have.
“I need air.”
I walked back into the kitchen.
Bent over the sink.
Tried to breathe.
Then something caught my eye.
The cabinet I had repaired earlier was slightly crooked.
I frowned.
I had tightened that hinge.
I opened the door.
Behind the plumbing was a thin wooden panel.
One screw had recently been disturbed.
“Dominic.”
He came beside me.
I removed the panel.
Behind it was a narrow metal compartment.
Inside sat a sealed envelope.
On the front, written in handwriting I recognized instantly, were two words:
FOR ELENA.
May you like
My mother had hidden something inside Dominic Vale’s kitchen.
And someone had sent me there to find it.
