Chapter 13 - His Father
Ryan read the sentence until the paper shook in his hand.
“No.”
I knew what he was thinking.
So did Harper.
She stopped him before guilt turned into certainty.
“We do not know what that means.”
“She wrote it for a reason.”
“Maybe. But we follow evidence.”
Evidence took us back eighteen months.
Ryan’s father, Thomas Carter, had died at home from complications of pancreatic cancer. His death had not been suspicious. He was sick. He was in hospice. Linda was his primary caregiver.
But the trust amendment that reduced Linda’s future income had been signed eight days before he died.
Linda had fought it.
Thomas signed anyway.
Ryan stared at the signature.
“He wanted the money to go to his grandchild.”
“Yes,” Michael Chen said. “He told me he wanted the next generation protected.”
“Did Linda know?”
“She was in the room when he told me.”
A chill crawled over my arms.
Police reopened a review of Thomas’s hospice records.
Not a murder investigation.
Not yet.
Just a review.
That distinction mattered to Harper.
It barely mattered to Ryan.
He drove home with me for the first time since the bathroom incident because police had cleared the house.
I almost couldn’t enter.
The hallway smelled like lemon cleaner.
The bathroom door stood open.
I stared at it until Ryan quietly closed it.
“We can tear the room out,” he said.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“I’m not letting her take a room from us too.”
We walked upstairs.
In the nursery, one of Lily’s framed newborn photographs was missing.
Ryan noticed it before I did.
“Wasn’t there one here?”
“Yes.”
A picture of the three of us in the hospital.
We searched the room.
The frame was behind the rocking chair.
Glass cracked.
My face had been scratched out with something sharp.
Ryan’s face was untouched.
Lily’s was untouched.
May you like
On the back were two words.
WRONG MOTHER.
