Chapter 4 - WHAT DAD KNEW
I did not drive to my father’s house.
Every instinct in me wanted to.
I wanted to put the damp envelope on his dining table beside the remains of the Christmas dinner I had been forbidden to attend.
I wanted to ask him how many lies could fit between a turkey, a promotion toast, and a sentence like Don’t come home this year.
But anger is not authority.
I was an Army officer, not a detective.
So I gave Linda’s information to Detective Park and let her decide what mattered legally.
It mattered.
By noon, state investigators were requesting security footage from the bus company, the rest stop, and Ridgeway’s corporate systems.
They were also asking questions about how Jason had obtained Erica’s itinerary.
I was back at the hospital when Dad finally arrived.
He stepped off the elevator wearing the same charcoal sweater he had worn in family Christmas pictures for years.
He looked older than he had three days earlier.
Not wiser.
Just older.
He saw me near the nurses’ station and stopped.
“Claire.”
I did not move toward him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
“You could have seen me at Christmas.”
His face tightened.
“I deserved that.”
“Yes.”
He glanced toward Erica’s hallway.
“Is she here?”
“That is not information I’m giving you.”
“I am not here for her.”
“Then why are you looking for her room?”
He looked back at me.
“I’m scared, Claire.”
It was the first honest thing he had said in days.
“Of what?”
“Of what is happening to this family.”
I almost laughed.
“This family was happening long before last night.”
“Please.”
“No.”
My voice stayed low because we were in a hospital.
“You asked me to disappear from Christmas so Jason could feel important.”
“I was wrong.”
“You were cruel.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He looked away.
“I saw you on the news.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this.”
His voice broke slightly.
“I sat there telling people how proud I was while remembering that I had told you not to come home.”
I stared at him.
There was remorse in his face.
That did not erase anything.
“Why did you do it?”
“I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“Jason was upset.”
“About my rank?”
“About the promotion dinner turning into another night where everyone asks about you.”
“Another night?”
Dad rubbed one hand over his face.
“You do not see what happens when you come home.”
“Explain it to me.”
“People ask about Afghanistan.”
“Sometimes.”
“They ask about command.”
“Sometimes.”
“They ask about medals and deployments and things Jason cannot compete with.”
“I have never asked him to compete.”
“I know.”
“Then why am I responsible for his insecurity?”
“You aren’t.”
“Yet I was the one you removed from Christmas.”
Dad closed his eyes.
“I thought it was one holiday.”
I felt something inside me become very still.
“That is what people say when they are explaining why somebody else should accept being hurt.”
He looked at me again.
“I’m sorry.”
I believed he was sorry.
I did not believe he understood yet.
“Did you know Erica planned to come to the house?” I asked.
“No.”
“Linda says she deleted Erica’s email before you saw it.”
His expression changed.
“What?”
“She also told Jason.”
Dad stared at me.
“She did what?”
“Jason came to your house the next morning and printed Erica’s passenger itinerary from your office.”
Dad’s face went pale.
“That is impossible.”
“Why?”
“My computer is password protected.”
“Does Jason know the password?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
He did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
“Dad.”
“I may have given it to him months ago.”
“For what?”
“He was helping me with tax files.”
“Do you still use the same password?”
His silence hardened into shame.
“Yes.”
I exhaled.
“Then he could access more than the printer.”
Dad sank into a chair beside the wall.
For the first time, his fear looked less like fear of scandal and more like fear of what he had enabled.
“I didn’t know.”
“I believe you didn’t know everything.”
He looked up sharply.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I no longer assume ignorance makes you innocent.”
He flinched.
I hated that part of me noticed.
I hated even more that another part did not care.
A hospital door opened farther down the hall.
Detective Park stepped out with Captain Ellis.
Dad stood quickly.
Park approached us.
“Mr. Donovan?”
“Yes.”
“I need to ask you some questions.”
Dad looked at me.
I said nothing.
Park led him into an empty consultation room.
I walked back to Erica.
She was sitting up now, reading something on a tablet the hospital had loaned her.
“You look angry,” she said.
“I am working on variety.”
She almost smiled.
Then she noticed Dad through the glass panel across the hall.
“That’s him?”
“Yes.”
“He looks like Jason when Jason is trying to appear reasonable.”
“No.”
I sat down.
“Jason looks like him.”
Erica placed the tablet aside.
“Did he know?”
“Not about your visit, if Linda is telling the truth.”
“That is a large if.”
“Yes.”
She studied me.
“You still want to protect him.”
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“I want facts.”
“That was not my question.”
I looked at her.
“I can be angry at him without wanting him destroyed.”
Erica nodded slowly.
“That is more generous than I feel toward Jason.”
“What did he do to you besides get you fired?”
She looked toward the window.
“For six months, he made me doubt my own memory.”
That answer was quieter than everything else she had said.
“He would approve a repair delay in a meeting, then email later claiming I had misunderstood.”
“He would tell drivers to exceed hours verbally, then discipline them when the logs showed it.”
“He would edit spreadsheets after I signed them and accuse me of entering the wrong figures.”
She swallowed.
“When I started saving screenshots, he told Grant I was collecting confidential data because I planned to sell it to a competitor.”
“Did Grant believe him?”
“Grant believed whichever version protected revenue.”
Erica’s jaw tightened.
“Then Jason found out I had spoken to a regulator.”
“What happened?”
“He called me into his office.”
Her eyes unfocused slightly.
“He locked the door.”
I felt my posture change.
“Did he touch you?”
“No.”
Her answer was immediate.
“But he stood between me and the door and told me I had two choices.”
“Which were?”
“Sign a statement saying my safety concerns were based on incomplete information, or lose my career.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him to move.”
A faint smile touched her mouth.
“He did.”
“Then he fired me the next morning.”
I sat quietly for a moment.
“Why contact my father?”
“Because I thought Jason still cared what your father thought of him.”
The irony was almost painful.
“You miscalculated.”
“I know that now.”
She reached toward her water.
“Also, your father sits on the board of the Front Range Children’s Foundation with Grant Holloway.”
I froze.
“What?”
“Grant and your father have known each other for years.”
“I knew they were friendly.”
“They are more than friendly.”
Erica picked up the borrowed tablet again.
“Your father received consulting payments from Ridgeway.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“He’s retired.”
“I know.”
“He never worked for Ridgeway.”
“Not officially.”
She turned the screen toward me.
A spreadsheet showed vendor payments.
One line read DONOVAN STRATEGIC ADVISORY.
The total over eight months was seventy-eight thousand dollars.
My father’s home address appeared beside it.
I felt the floor shift beneath everything I thought I understood.
“What was he consulting on?”
“I never found a contract.”
“Could it be legitimate?”
“It could.”
“But you do not think so.”
“I think Grant liked having people around him who owed him something.”
Before I could respond, Detective Park opened the door.
Her expression told me Dad’s interview had produced something.
“Major Donovan, may I speak with you?”
I stepped into the hallway.
Dad was gone from the consultation room.
“Where is he?”
“Your stepmother picked him up.”
“What happened?”
Park handed me a printed screenshot from my father’s email account.
“Mr. Donovan consented to a limited review.”
I looked down.
The message was from Grant Holloway.
It had been sent two weeks earlier.
Richard, make sure Claire is not at the Christmas dinner if you can avoid it.
Jason needs one night where no one compares him to the soldier.
Below that was my father’s reply.
I’ll handle Claire.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
Park spoke quietly.
“There is another message.”
I looked up.
She handed me the second page.
This one was from Jason.
It had been sent four minutes after Erica’s first email reached my father’s inbox.
May you like
Thanks for keeping Claire away.
If Erica tries anything, I don’t need my stepsister asking questions.
