Chapter 5 - MY FATHER'S EMPTY CHAIR
By noon, three patrol cars were parked outside my parents' house.
I watched from behind the windshield of Alvarez's sedan because she refused to let me approach the property.
Helen stood on the porch in a pale-blue blouse as though she had dressed for a neighborhood committee meeting.
Rebecca stood behind her with both arms folded.
Neither looked frightened that Dad was missing.
That frightened me more than anything.
Deputy Harris came down the steps carrying a clear evidence bag.
Inside was Dad's phone.
Alvarez met him at the curb.
I could not hear the first part of their conversation, but I saw Harris shake his head.
When Alvarez returned, she opened my door and crouched beside it.
"Your mother says your father became agitated around midnight and left on foot."
"Dad has a bad knee. He does not walk farther than three blocks if he can avoid it."
"We know."
"Does the doorbell camera show him leaving?"
"Your mother's camera was disabled from 11:48 p.m. to 5:10 a.m."
"Of course it was."
"The back camera was disabled too."
"Of course it was."
"She says there was an internet outage."
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
"Ask the neighbors if their internet went out."
"We are."
Rebecca came down the porch steps before the officers could stop her.
She walked directly toward our car.
Alvarez stood up.
"Ms. Mercer, stay on the property."
Rebecca ignored her.
She looked at me through the open door.
"You happy now?"
I could not believe the question.
"Where is Dad?"
"You pushed him over the edge."
"Where is he?"
"He could not take your accusations."
"You had his phone."
Her mouth tightened.
"No one had his phone."
"Then why was he texting like Mom?"
Alvarez stepped between us.
"This conversation is over."
Rebecca lifted her chin.
"She is destroying our family, Detective."
Alvarez's voice remained flat.
"Your father is missing, and you are interfering with an active investigation. Go inside."
Rebecca finally turned.
As she walked away, I noticed a scratch along the back of her right hand.
It was fresh.
I remembered Dad's fingernails catching on the patio stones when he fell beside the fire.
The thought that followed was irrational and immediate.
I wanted police to search Rebecca's car.
Alvarez wanted something else first.
"Did your father have anywhere he went when he wanted to be alone?"
"The storage unit."
"Anywhere else?"
I thought through thirty years of quiet habits.
Hardware stores.
Fishing docks.
Church basement repairs.
A diner on Route 29 where he ordered eggs at six in the morning.
Then I remembered an old hunting cabin that belonged to his friend Walter Price.
Dad had stopped hunting years earlier, but he still helped Walter maintain the place.
"There is a cabin near Lake Anna."
Alvarez relayed the information.
A deputy headed there.
While we waited, officers canvassed the neighborhood.
Mrs. Patel across the street had a camera angled toward my parents' driveway.
At 12:26 a.m., it captured headlights.
A dark SUV backed into the driveway and remained there for nine minutes.
The license plate was not visible.
At 12:35, it left.
No image showed Dad walking out.
Helen said she had been asleep.
Rebecca said she had left the house at 10:00 p.m.
Her own car's toll records showed she crossed the bridge toward Richmond at 12:52 a.m.
The route from my parents' house to that bridge took sixteen minutes.
Detective Alvarez asked where she had been before 12:52.
Rebecca stopped answering questions.
At 2:08 p.m., the deputy at Lake Anna called.
Dad was not at the cabin.
But someone had been there.
A cot had been unfolded.
A coffee mug was still damp.
A first-aid kit sat open on the table.
In the trash was a strip of medical gauze with hospital tape attached.
Dad had been there after leaving the emergency clinic.
The question was whether he had gone there willingly.
Police found another clue on the porch.
A broken plastic button.
Navy blue.
Helen's blouse that morning was pale blue.
Rebecca had worn navy slacks at the shower.
I knew that proved nothing.
My mind turned it into proof anyway.
At home that evening, Camille sat with Lily while I called David.
David was my husband, though we had been separated for four months.
He worked on an engineering project in North Carolina and had driven through the night after I told him what happened.
We were not reconciled.
We were not enemies either.
Whatever problems existed between us disappeared the moment he saw the singed corner of Lily's blanket sealed in a police bag.
He stood in my living room with both hands on his hips and cried without making a sound.
"I should have been here."
"You could not know."
"Your mother hated the pregnancy."
"So did half my family."
"That is not normal, Margaret."
"I know that now."
David looked toward the bassinet.
"I want to stay tonight."
Part of me resisted automatically.
Our separation had trained us to protect space.
Then my phone lit with another message from an unknown number.
"Stop looking for James."
I showed it to David.
He did not ask again.
He locked the windows.
At 7:30 p.m., Detective Alvarez came to the house with a warrant for a digital copy of my recent messages and Rebecca's social media posts.
She also brought news about Danielle's preview file.
The audio was authentic.
It had not been edited.
Helen's voice was clear.
"If Rebecca cannot have the first grandchild, no one gets to celebrate one."
The file ended four seconds later.
"Is that enough to arrest her?"
Alvarez chose her words carefully.
"It supports intent, but we still need to establish what happened next."
"My father established what happened next."
"Your father has not signed his original statement."
"Because someone is controlling him."
"That is one possibility."
"What is the other?"
"That he is afraid."
I looked at the old family photographs on my mantel.
Dad stood at the edge of almost every picture.
Helen occupied the center.
"He has always been afraid of her."
"Fear can make witnesses unpredictable."
"He saved Lily."
"Yes."
"That has to mean something."
"It does."
Alvarez leaned forward.
"But if this goes to court, the defense will not only ask what he did. They will ask why his story changed afterward."
The next morning, the answer arrived in a FedEx envelope addressed to me.
There was no return name.
Inside was a photocopy of a document signed by Dad eighteen months earlier.
It was a loan guarantee.
He had personally guaranteed $240,000 in business debt for Rebecca's boutique design company.
If the company defaulted, Dad could lose the house.
A yellow sticky note had been attached to the copy.
The handwriting was Helen's.
"If James turns against us, everyone loses everything."
David read it over my shoulder.
"She is holding the house over him."
"Not only the house."
I remembered the trust papers.
The transfers to Rebecca.
The years of money moving whenever Rebecca needed rescue.
Helen had built a family economy around obedience.
Then my phone rang.
It was an unknown Virginia number.
I answered without speaking.
For two seconds, there was only static.
Then my father's voice whispered, "Maggie?"
I stood so fast the chair scraped the floor.
"Dad, where are you?"
"Listen to me."
"Where are you?"
"Do not trust the revised statement."
"I know."
A sound came through the line.
A car door.
Dad lowered his voice.
"The recorder has everything."
"What everything?"
"Six days before the shower. Kitchen. Helen and Rebecca."
My pulse hammered.
"Dad, tell me where you are."
He breathed my name again.
Then another voice sounded in the background.
A woman's voice.
"James?"
Dad whispered one final sentence.
"She knows about the trust."
The call ended.
Detective Alvarez traced the number to a prepaid phone.
The last signal came from a gas station forty miles south.
May you like
By the time officers arrived, the phone was lying broken in a trash can.
Dad was gone again.
