Chapter 6 - The Father I Had Buried
My father, Marcus Ellis, had died eleven years earlier.
I had identified his body after an automobile accident outside San Antonio.
I had watched the funeral workers lower his casket.
The photograph on my kitchen counter showed him older than he had looked at his death.
At least, that was my first impossible impression.
I demanded the image in its original resolution.
Reed's security team sent it through the proper evidence channel.
Under magnification, I recognized the scar on my father's left eyebrow.
I also recognized the watch he wore in our last family photograph.
The timestamp on the print claimed it had been taken six years after his death.
I checked the background.
It showed a veterans conference banner from a year I could verify.
Someone wanted me to believe my father had lived.
That did not make it true.
Marlowe listened as I described the accident.
She did not offer comfort disguised as certainty.
Instead she asked whether my father's death file was accessible.
“It should be.”
“Then we'll confirm what can be confirmed.”
Daniel found me by the stairwell.
For a moment he looked like the man I had married before contempt overtook our home.
“Kesha, I need to know whether they're mine.”
I looked at him.
“You knew I was pregnant with quadruplets.”
“I knew what you said.”
“You attended the first scan.”
He flinched.
“I thought you had staged the rest.”
“How?”
He had no answer.
“Do you want a test now?” he asked.
“Their consent and welfare come first.”
“I have rights.”
“Rights do not erase eight years of decisions.”
His jaw tightened.
Then he said something that sounded almost honest.
“Mother told me you took money to disappear.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
I laughed once because the number was absurd.
“At the time, I was choosing between a better stroller and repairing my car.”
Daniel lowered his eyes.
The admission meant he had accepted a story about my greed because it freed him from responsibility.
I refused to let him turn that into an excuse.
That evening, the police found a second photograph in the same envelope.
It showed my father shaking hands with General Arthur Reynolds, Daniel's late father.
On the reverse, someone had written an address in Colorado Springs and the words ASK ABOUT THE WINTER LIST.
Marlowe recognized the address.
It belonged to a storage building formerly leased by the Lone Star Veterans Relief Foundation.
She arranged a lawful search request while I booked a flight home for the children.
Before midnight, our hotel received a package wrapped in red paper.
Inside was a new teddy bear.
A card on its ribbon read, OLIVIA LIKES THE BLUE ONE BEST.
May you like
There was no way the sender should have known.
