Chapter 4 - The First Recording
I didn't hand him the folder.
I asked him why a railing had been removed before my father's fall.
Eliam looked at me for a long moment.
Then he laughed once, without humor.
“Your sister has been filling your head with lies.”
He took the invoice from the counter and tore it in half.
The sound was so ordinary it frightened me more than a shout would have.
“That is our financial paperwork,” I said.
“It was a mistake.”
“Then why destroy it?”
He stepped aside.
“Go to bed.”
I walked upstairs with an empty hand and a clear understanding that I could not safely confront him alone.
The following morning, Naomi helped me request the repair company's retained work order.
The owner remembered the job.
He also remembered a man insisting the work be done before the homeowner returned.
“A younger fellow,” he said.
“Dark hair. Nice watch.”
He found a scanned authorization in his records.
The signature wasn't Dad's.
It was Eliam's.
While Naomi arranged a formal preservation request, I went to Dad's old house.
The property remained in the estate and had stood empty since his death.
A neighbor named Mrs. Calder saw me at the gate.
“I'm glad you finally came,” she said.
She retrieved a small audio recorder from her kitchen cupboard.
“Your father asked me to keep this if something happened.”
I played the first file in my car.
Dad's voice came through beneath a hum of machinery.
“If you're hearing this, the checks weren't loans.”
A long pause followed.
“Eliam says I have to keep quiet until the auditors finish.”
My throat closed.
Then Dad said the sentence I would replay a hundred times.
“Mara warned me, and I should have listened.”
The recording stopped abruptly.
Mrs. Calder knocked on my window again.
“There were two recordings,” she said.
“Where's the other?”
She looked past me toward the empty house.
May you like
“Your husband took it the morning after the ambulance left.”
