Chapter 7 - The Blue Ledger
I hadn't seen the blue ledger. Lucía had mentioned it, but she'd never told me where she hid it. Now the man claiming to be our father wanted it badly enough to threaten three people.
"Tell me everything," I said.
"I found it in Mom's sewing box," Lucía whispered. "Celia gave the box back when I moved apartments. There was a false bottom."
She'd photographed every page. Names, dates, deposits, and handwritten notes in our mother's neat slanted writing. Then she'd hidden the original at a place only the two of us would recognize.
"Remember the tire swing?"
It took me a second. Behind the repair shop, I'd kept our childhood swing hung from an old maple. We hadn't used it in years.
Nora sent an officer with me. Under the rotten board at its base we found a vacuum-sealed bag containing a blue notebook, a memory card, and a birthday card Lucía had written but never mailed.
The card said: I'M NOT MAD YOU MISSED DINNER. I'M MAD YOU THINK YOU HAVE TO PROTECT ME FROM EVERYTHING.
I folded it carefully and put it away. There would be time to apologize if we lived long enough.
The ledger recorded a second, unofficial set of accounts going back sixteen years. It named Daniel Cruz, Dean Mercer, and an accountant called Harold Finch. Beside my mother's death date was one line, underlined twice: GARAGE KEY / D.C. KEPT COPY.
"Your mom knew," Nora said. "She was building a record."
The memory card held photographs of contracts and a short video taken through our kitchen doorway. Mom was arguing with Dad. She said she would report the money he'd stolen from their land. He stepped toward the camera and slapped it down. Before the video ended, he said, "You aren't taking my children."
I sat in the shop's back office staring at the blank screen.
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Nora's phone rang. Her search team had located Northline's van near Mill Nine. But the building was empty. In the center of the floor, under a bare bulb, sat one chair with fresh rope still tied to its arms.
And on that chair was Jamie's school jacket, soaked in blood.
