Chapter 3 - The Funeral Without a Body
Samuel sat down slowly.
“When?”
“Nineteen ninety-eight,” Emma said. “Car accident outside St. Louis.”
Samuel stared at her.
“That’s not possible.”
David folded his arms. “Why?”
“Because in 1998 I was still looking for her.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed. “My father buried her.”
“Did you see her?”
“I was five.”
“Did anyone in your family see her?”
Emma opened her mouth, then stopped.
Samuel hated the next question before he asked it.
“Was there a body?”
Emma’s face drained.
“My dad said the car burned.”
Samuel leaned forward. “Evelyn vanished in 1996 after an argument with our father. She was twenty-six. She called me once from a pay phone in Missouri. She sounded scared. She said she had made a mistake and needed to come home.”
“What mistake?” David asked.
“She never said. The line went dead.”
Emma gripped the edge of the hospital chair.
“My father’s name is Richard Lane.”
Samuel shut his eyes.
He knew the name.
Not well. But enough.
Twenty-nine years earlier, Evelyn had mailed Samuel a Christmas card. On the back, almost as an afterthought, she had written: I met someone. His name is Richard. Dad hates him. Please don’t tell Dad where I’m living.
Samuel had obeyed.
He had regretted it every year since.
“I knew she was seeing Richard,” Samuel said.
Emma stepped closer. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“Why would my father lie about her family?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would he tell me she was dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma’s voice rose. “Then what do you know?”
Samuel reached for his wallet and pulled out a photograph so old the edges had turned white.
Three people stood beside a fishing dock. Samuel at twenty-five. Their mother, Ruth. And a laughing dark-haired girl holding up a trout.
Evelyn.
Emma took the picture.
Her hand began to shake.
“That’s her.”
Before anyone could speak, Emma’s phone rang.
She looked at the screen.
DAD.
Samuel whispered, “Don’t tell him I’m here.”
Emma answered.
May you like
Richard Lane didn’t say hello.
He said, “Emma, get away from Samuel Johnson right now.”
