Chapter 12 - What My Mother Hid
Mara moved Nina to a protected location while state investigators secured her tape. I wanted to smash every window in every building my father owned. Instead I drove to the highway diner in Mom's photograph.
The waitress remembered Mom because she'd been crying over an untouched peach pie.
“The man across from her never raised his voice,” she said. “That made it worse.”
The owner still had camera footage. Mara obtained it, and we watched Mom slide an envelope across the table. Voss opened it, read a page, and pushed it back.
Inside Mom's drawer, I had found the same envelope, with a letter she'd never mailed.
*Daniel, Elise has seen you. Leave her alone. I'll tell the police about the fire if you touch either of my girls.*
My mother hadn't met him to help him. She'd gone to threaten the man she'd spent sixteen years fearing.
At the hospital, Elise read the letter twice.
“She could've told us,” she said.
“Maybe she thought silence was protection.”
“She taught us to look both ways before crossing a street. She couldn't teach us to look out for our own father?”
I didn't have an answer.
Elise showed me the faded scar on her thumb from the day our father taught her to ride a bike. She'd kept that memory like a small, warm stone. Now it felt poisonous.
“Do you remember how he used to say, 'Family keeps family safe'?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“He didn't mean us. He meant his secrets.”
Mara called from the corridor. Forensic technicians had recovered a partial license plate from the diner footage. The car was registered to a Voss company with a storage property near the river.
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Before she finished speaking, a message arrived on my phone: a picture of Mom beside a concrete floodgate. Her eyes were open. Her hands were tied.
Under the picture, Dad had written: BRING THE TAPE. THIS TIME, COME ALONE.
