Chapter 2 - THE STORAGE UNIT THEY PAID FOR IN CASH
The storage facility opened at seven the next morning.
I had not slept.
Neither had Joe.
Police had questioned him for nearly four hours, then allowed him to leave because there was no evidence of a crime—yet.
He refused to tell me everything.
“I want the police there when we open it.”
That sentence did nothing to calm me.
Unit 47 had been paid in cash annually for twenty-seven years.
At first by Mom.
For the last five years, by Joe.
I found that out from the facility manager.
I looked at my husband.
“You’ve been coming here?”
“Once a year.”
“You lied every time?”
His face tightened.
“Yes.”
Detective Mills opened the unit.
Dust rolled through the narrow doorway.
Inside were six banker boxes.
An old portable cassette recorder.
A leather briefcase.
And a wooden chair.
Nothing looked dramatic.
Then we opened the first box.
Peter Lawson’s accounting records.
He had apparently discovered someone moving company money through shell accounts.
Not fifty thousand dollars.
Not even hundreds of thousands.
More than $1.2 million.
“Your mother reported that Peter stole money,” Mills said.
“That’s what everyone believed.”
Joe gave a humorless laugh.
“Peter didn’t steal most of it.”
I turned.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“Who did?”
Joe stared at the records.
“Your mother.”
My stomach dropped.
“No.”
“Not for herself.”
“Then why?”
“Laura, listen—”
“Don’t tell me to listen after twenty-seven years of lying.”
He stopped.
Fair.
Detective Mills opened the second box.
Photographs.
Peter meeting Mom outside banks.
Peter entering her office after midnight.
Then a photograph of Peter standing beside Joe.
Taken before Joe and I had even started dating.
I stared.
“You knew him before me?”
Joe’s silence became an answer.
“How?”
“He hired me.”
“For what?”
Joe had been working private security then.
Peter told him Margaret was stealing from the business and wanted proof.
Joe investigated.
Instead, he found evidence that Peter was blackmailing her.
“With what?”
Joe looked at me.
Then at the sealed envelope from the red-maple box.
He finally said:
“With you.”
My chest tightened.
“What does that mean?”
Detective Mills opened the leather briefcase.
Inside was a laboratory report.
Old.
Yellowed.
PATERNITY ANALYSIS.
Mother:
Margaret Hale.
Child:
Laura Hale.
Alleged father:
Peter Lawson.
Probability of paternity:
99.94%.
The room disappeared around me.
May you like
The man missing for twenty-seven years was not simply my mother’s accountant.
He was my biological father.
