Ben had always been the steady one. When we were children, he climbed trees first so he could tell me which branches were safe. When Rosie got lost during a crowded Fourth of July festival at age eight, Ben found her sitting beneath a lemonade stand before the police did. When my mother died, he slept on the floor outside my bedroom because I was afraid to be alone.
Now he looked as lost as I felt.
I grabbed the letter from him.
There were four handwritten pages, all in Rosie’s careful print. Her letters were rounded and deliberate, each word spaced evenly. As a child, she had pressed so hard with pencils that she tore holes in notebooks. Even now, she wrote as though every sentence deserved to be carved into stone.
I began again.
Claire, if you are reading this, I may be dead. Dad killed Mom, and without knowing it, you gave him the perfect alibi.
My stomach twisted.
I kept reading.
You were sixteen, and none of this was your fault. You believed what he told you because he was our father and because you were scared. I believed him too. But I remember more than everyone thinks I remember.
My vision blurred.
A memory rose from somewhere deep and sealed.
Rain beating against the kitchen windows.
My father coming through the back door with blood on his shirt.
His voice shaking as he told me there had been an accident at the workshop.
Me handing him the keys to my mother’s car because he said she had forgotten them.
But that made no sense.
Her car had been found miles away.
At the bottom of Bellweather Ravine.
I read on.
The night Mom disappeared, Dad asked you to say he had been home since nine. You did. You told the police he was upstairs taking a shower when Mom called to say she was driving back from Aunt Lydia’s house. You thought you heard the shower. You did not know he had left it running.
My hands began trembling.
The memory changed.
My father in the kitchen, soaked from the rain.
The wall clock behind him.
Not nine fifteen.
Eleven forty-two.
I had lied to the police.
I had told them he had been home all evening because he took my face in both hands and said, Claire, your mother may be hurt. The police cannot waste time questioning me.
I had repeated his story word for word.
A sixteen-year-old girl trying to save her mother.
Instead, I had protected the man who killed her.
I folded in half.
Ben grabbed me and lowered me onto a plastic chair.
“I’m going to be sick.”
He crouched in front of me.
“Breathe.”
“Don’t tell me to breathe.”
“I need you conscious.”
“Why? So you can tell me the rest of my life is a lie?”
“No. So we can stop him.”
I looked up.
“Stop him from what?”
Ben glanced at the letter.
“Rosie believed your father knew she had discovered the truth.”
A coldness spread through me.
“The pregnancy complication—”
“The doctors think it was natural.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you suspect him.”
“I suspect Richard of anything now.”
My father had been in the hospital that morning.
He had kissed Rosie’s forehead before they took her upstairs.
He had called her his brave little girl.
Then he had left, saying he could not bear to watch his daughter suffer.
I remembered the way he had gripped Ben’s shoulder.
Take care of her.
Had it been a plea?
Or a warning?
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Probably at home.”
“Call the police.”
“We don’t have enough yet.”
“There’s a letter saying he murdered my mother.”
“A letter written by his daughter after reviewing evidence we haven’t secured.”
“What evidence?”
Ben looked down the hallway.
Then he lowered his voice.
“Inside your house.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Rosie hid something there.”
“Why my house?”
“Because Richard never visits without warning. She believed it was the safest place.”
“What did she hide?”
“A drive.”
“What’s on it?”
