Chapter 18 - Family Keeps Family Safe
Police flooded the backyard. A voice shouted that someone had entered the cellar. I stayed with Mom in the living room, where Mara had told us to remain, and watched the dark hallway.
My father's voice came from below the floorboards.
“Nora, I'm not armed. I want to talk.”
Mara ordered him to come upstairs with his hands visible.
Instead, he climbed just far enough for me to see his face through the cellar doorway. I had spent sixteen years imagining him trapped in a burning building. Now he stood before me, older and frightened, and somehow that was worse.
“You let us bury you,” I said.
“I had no choice.”
“You always had a choice. You made Elise pay for it.”
His jaw tightened. “She threatened everything I built.”
“She wanted the truth.”
“Truth doesn't feed a family.”
Mom stepped forward. “Neither does burying its children.”
He turned on her. “I watched you raise them in that little house. I sent money. You threw it back.”
“Because it wasn't yours,” she said. “It belonged to Samuel and the people you cheated.”
The man who used to lift me onto his shoulders looked at us as if we'd become strangers.
“I loved you girls,” he said.
“Then why did Elise have to beg for air?”
He didn't answer. Mara's body camera recorded every word.
An officer shouted from the yard. Daniel lunged backward into the cellar, slammed a metal door, and kicked the latch shut. By the time police forced it, he had escaped through an old coal chute beneath the porch.
Mara's radio reported footsteps on the river path.
May you like
I ran to the window and saw him heading toward a small boat tied to the lower dock.
Then he turned, pulled a second gun from his coat, and aimed it at the officer pursuing him.
