The next morning, Bell asked me to come to the sheriff’s office.
Grant offered to drive me.
I accepted.
Lily stayed with him.
The photograph had been printed on ordinary paper. Bell placed it on the table between us.
Evan stood near the warehouse loading dock.
Madison stood several feet away.
She was younger than in the photograph from the missing-person report, perhaps twelve.
Between them was a woman I did not recognize.
She was holding a clipboard.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“We’re still identifying her.”
I leaned closer.
The woman’s face was turned partly away.
Something about her seemed familiar.
Not her face.
Her coat.
I remembered seeing it somewhere.
Then it came to me.
My mother had owned a dark green coat with a brass clasp.
The woman in the photograph wore one almost exactly like it.
I looked at Bell.
“Is that my mother?”
“We don’t know.”
I stared at the image.
“Can I see it again?”
He slid it toward me.
There was a date written on the back.
Six months earlier.
Beneath it were two initials.
E.W.
Evan Whitman.
“What happened at that warehouse?”
Bell opened another folder.
“Your brother was questioned about missing inventory. The company reported equipment and electronic components disappearing over several months.”
“Was Madison involved?”
“We don’t know.”
“What about the woman?”
“We believe she may have been an employee of a subcontractor.”
I looked at him.
“You said you were identifying her.”
“We have a possible name.”
He turned a page.
“Marissa Cole.”
The name meant nothing.
Then Bell added, “She worked for a company your father used for bookkeeping.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
The room seemed suddenly smaller.
“What kind of bookkeeping?”
“Business accounts. Payroll. Inventory.”
I thought about my father’s office at home.
The locked filing cabinet.
The stacks of receipts.
The way he had always become irritated when anyone touched his desk.
“Why would Madison be there?”
“We’re investigating.”
I pushed the photograph away.
“Tell me what you think happened.”
“I can tell you what we know.”
“Then tell me.”
Bell folded his hands.
“We believe Evan knew Madison before she disappeared. We believe your parents may have known she was being kept in the basement. We’re also investigating whether her disappearance is connected to financial activity involving your father’s business.”
I stared at him.
“And my mother?”
“We don’t know her role.”
I thought of her call.
The blue envelope.
The warning not to let me open anything.
“She wants Lily back.”
Bell looked at me.
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Then don’t let her have access to Lily.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
After the interview, Grant was waiting outside.
“What did they find?”
I told him.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he said, “We need a lawyer.”
“I agree.”
We called one that afternoon.
Her name was Evelyn Hart, and she had represented my father years earlier in a business dispute. She listened to everything without reacting.
When I mentioned the blue envelope, she stopped taking notes.
“Did your mother say those words directly to you?”
“No. To Grant.”
“And she knew he would tell you?”
“I assume so.”
Evelyn leaned back.
“Then she may have wanted you to know.”
“Why?”
“To make you look in a particular place.”
I thought about that.
“You think she’s trying to tell me something?”
“I think we should assume every move your family makes has a reason.”
The statement frightened me because it sounded exactly like something my mother would have said about someone else.
Evelyn arranged for a court order protecting Lily from unsupervised contact with my parents while the investigation continued.
That night, Grant and I sat in his apartment after Lily went to sleep.
“You should stay here,” he said.
“I can’t move in.”
“I didn’t say move in.”
I looked at him.
He rubbed his hands together.
“I’m saying you don’t have to do everything alone.”
“I know.”
“You don’t act like you know.”
I looked away.
For months, I had treated Grant as the person who had failed me.
Now I was beginning to wonder whether I had been too angry to notice the ways he had been trying to help.
The next morning, Bell called again.
“Your mother wants to see you.”
“No.”
“She says she has information.”
“Then she can give it to you.”
“She refuses.”
I looked at Grant.
“What information?”
Bell lowered his voice.
“She says it concerns Lily.”
My stomach tightened.
“Where?”
“Interview room at the courthouse.”
I agreed.
Evelyn insisted on coming with me.
My mother looked smaller than I remembered.
She sat at the table with her hands folded.
Her hair was tied back.
She looked tired.
For one second, I saw the woman who had held me when I was a child.
Then I remembered Madison barefoot on the basement floor.
“Why did you let her stay there?”
My mother closed her eyes.
“I didn’t know what Evan was doing.”
“You knew she was there.”
“Yes.”
“You knew she was crying.”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you call someone?”
She looked at me.
“Because Evan told me she would die.”
I went still.
“What?”
“He said people were looking for her.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expected me to believe that?”
“I expected you never to know.”
The answer hurt more than an excuse would have.
“Why?”
She reached into her purse.
Evelyn shifted beside me.
My mother placed a blue envelope on the table.
I stared at it.
“This belonged to your father.”
I did not touch it.
“What’s inside?”
“Proof.”
“Proof of what?”
She looked toward the door.
“Your father did not know everything Evan was doing.”
I frowned.
“Then what did he know?”
My mother whispered, “Enough to be afraid.”
She pushed the envelope toward me.
I opened it.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
At the top was my name.
Below it was an account number.
And beneath that was a date from three years earlier.
The date was the day before my divorce began.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: The Account Had Been Opened Before My Marriage Ended, and Its First Payment Connected My Divorce to a Secret My Father Had Buried
I Thought Moving Back Home Would Be the Hardest Part of Starting Over, Until I Heard a Child Crying Beneath My Bedroom Floor
Part 6 of 12
