Chapter 4 - The Question My Father Asked After the Explosion
I listened to the audio in a conference room at the county investigator's office.
Price warned me that the recording's origin had not yet been authenticated.
It opened with Grandpa's voice, thinner than I remembered but unmistakable.
“You don't get to make plans for her death,” he said.
My father responded, “You are being dramatic.”
Then came a third voice asking whether my status as an active-duty service member would complicate the transfer timeline.
Grandpa struck the table hard enough to shake the recording device.
“Get out of my home.”
The file ended there.
I sat with my hands clasped tightly together until the ache in my reconstructed knee reminded me to uncross my legs.
Price said investigators were examining the emails and financial trail, but none of it established that Dad had caused or influenced the explosion.
I was grateful he said that plainly.
Lewis had died in an attack overseas.
My grief did not entitle me to invent a crime that evidence had not proven.
What the documents did show was appalling enough.
Dad appeared to have made plans around the possibility that I would not survive deployment.
He had treated my death like a line item in an acquisition budget.
Mara showed me the original deed from Grandpa and explained the significance of a separate affidavit naming me as the sole intended owner.
For all Dad's paperwork, he had never secured a valid transfer from me.
The court's emergency order remained in effect.
Before leaving, Price told me investigators had located Conrad Vale's current office in Richmond.
They planned to interview him.
At home, Mom offered to cook dinner.
I told her the food was in the refrigerator and went outside to repair a loose gate.
She followed at a distance, careful not to cross the invisible line between us.
“I thought if I stayed with your father, I could keep the family together,” she said.
I tightened a hinge.
“You kept standing beside him while he cut me out of it.”
She stared at the ground.
“I know.”
That was the first honest thing she had said without defending herself.
At nine that night, my doorbell camera captured a sedan slowing on the county road.
It stopped at the mailbox, and someone slipped a thick package inside.
Ortiz retrieved it after checking the area.
The contents were copies of a land survey, a development plan, and a handwritten note.
“Ask your mother about the east field.”
At the bottom of the survey, a rectangle had been marked in red.
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The label read: PARCEL B – PREVIOUSLY CONVEYED.
