Chapter 10 - MY MOTHER’S LAST NIGHT
My mother died when I was twelve.
Dad told me her car slid off an icy road during a winter storm.
There were no other vehicles involved.
She died before paramedics arrived.
For years, I remembered only fragments.
A police officer at the door.
Dad kneeling in the hallway.
My mother’s red scarf folded on the kitchen table.
Now Ryan claimed there was more.
Dad stood near the window of the secure apartment.
He kept his back toward me.
“What is he talking about?”
“I don’t know.”
“You looked like you knew.”
Dad turned around.
“I knew the official investigation had unanswered questions.”
“What questions?”
“Your mother was not supposed to be on that road.”
I waited.
Dad continued.
“She called me thirty minutes before the crash.”
“She said someone had been following her.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were twelve.”
“I’m not twelve anymore.”
“No.”
Dad lowered his eyes.
“But I spent years trying to protect you from something I could not prove.”
He had hired a private investigator after the police closed the case.
The investigator discovered that my mother’s nonprofit organization had been examining fraudulent military housing contracts.
Several companies overcharged families and paid kickbacks to officials.
One of those companies belonged to Linda’s late husband, Robert Cole.
Ryan’s father.
I felt the room tilt.
“Did you know when I married Ryan?”
“No.”
“His father used a different corporate name.”
“I discovered the connection last year.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“I was gathering evidence.”
“You let me stay with him.”
Dad flinched as if I had struck him.
“I believed Ryan might not know anything about his father’s business.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know what to believe.”
Sarah arranged a controlled interview.
I did not meet Ryan alone.
He sat behind reinforced glass.
A detective remained beside me.
Dad watched from another room.
Ryan looked thinner.
There were dark circles beneath his eyes.
But his smile remained the same.
“You finally came.”
“What do you know about my mother?”
“I know she wasn’t alone on that road.”
My fingers tightened around the telephone.
“Who was with her?”
“My father.”
Ryan watched my reaction carefully.
He wanted to hurt me.
He wanted to control the room again.
I refused to give him that power.
“Prove it.”
Ryan leaned closer to the glass.
“There’s a storage locker in Milwaukee.”
“Unit 418.”
“My father kept records from his companies.”
“Linda found them after he died.”
“What is inside?”
“Contracts.”
“Payments.”
“Photographs.”
“And a cassette tape your mother recorded the night she died.”
My breath stopped.
“Why would Linda keep it?”
“Insurance.”
“Against whom?”
“My father.”
“He didn’t die in his sleep like everyone thinks.”
Ryan smiled again.
“Linda made sure of that.”
I stared through the glass.
“You expect me to believe she killed her husband?”
“I expect you to understand my mother.”
“She keeps evidence until it becomes useful.”
“Where is the key?”
“Give me a deal.”
“No.”
“Then you’ll never hear your mother’s voice.”
I placed the receiver down.
Ryan’s smile disappeared.
He tapped the glass.
I stood.
He grabbed his phone again and shouted through the receiver.
“Emily.”
I kept walking.
“Emily, your father knows more.”
I stopped but did not turn around.
Ryan’s voice echoed through the visiting room.
“Ask Colonel Bennett why he met my mother three days after the funeral.”
Dad was waiting outside.
I looked directly at him.
May you like
“Did you meet Linda after Mom died?”
His silence gave me the answer.
