“Your mother kept a journal. This entry was dated one week before the crash.”
I read it.
Valerie came by today. She cried. Then she threatened me. She said if I humiliated Jack, I would regret it. She said Chloe would never forgive me if she knew the truth about her father. I told her Chloe deserves truth more than comfort. Valerie said truth burns houses down.
My throat closed.
Below that, Mom had written one more line.
If anything happens to me, look at Valerie first. Then Jack.
The kitchen blurred.
Grandma whispered, “Sarah.”
Adrian gave us a moment.
Then he said, “There’s an additional complication.”
I looked up.
Valerie was pregnant.
That was what he told us.
Or rather, Valerie claimed she was pregnant.
She had sent Dad an ultrasound photo and a message saying that canceling the wedding would make him “a man who abandoned two children.”
Two children.
Me and whatever she claimed to be carrying.
I should have felt something.
Shock. Jealousy. Fear.
Instead I heard Mom’s sentence in my head.
Believe his actions. Not his apologies.
Dad’s actions were clear.
He had not canceled the wedding.
Pregnant or not, threatened or not, he was still walking down the aisle.
Grandma sat very still.
“Adrian,” she said, “find out whether that ultrasound is real.”
He nodded.
“I already have someone checking.”
I stared at him.
“How do you check something like that?”
“The same way Valerie does anything,” he said. “Sloppily.”
That was the first time I liked him.
The week before the wedding, Valerie called me seventeen times.
I didn’t answer.
Then she texted.
You are hurting your father.
I blocked her.
She emailed.
Your mother would be ashamed of how cruel you’re being.
Grandma printed it.
Evidence.
Then came the message that changed everything.
It arrived from an unknown number.
You think Eleanor is protecting you? Ask her what Sarah found in the basement.
I showed Grandma.
For the first time since this began, she looked genuinely confused.
“The basement?” I asked.
Grandma’s house had a basement full of canned peaches, Christmas ornaments, and Grandpa’s old tools.
But our house had one too.
A finished basement Dad used as an office.
“Did Mom find something?” I asked.
Grandma shook her head slowly.
“She never told me.”
Adrian arranged for us to enter the house with a court order two days later.
Dad was not there.
Valerie was.