Chapter 8 - The File With My Name
Dr. Trent saw my face and immediately reached for the papers.
“Wait.”
I pulled them away.
“No.”
“Nora, you’re misunderstanding what you’re looking at.”
“My name is on the folder.”
“Yes.”
“And there’s a DNA report inside.”
“That report isn’t yours.”
I stopped.
Ben looked up.
Trent took the report carefully and turned it over.
A second name appeared on the back.
Benjamin Carter.
Ben’s face went still.
Trent looked at him.
“That test confirmed Helen was your biological mother.”
I stared at the page, then at Ben.
Relief hit me so quickly my knees weakened.
Adam had not been related to me.
But relief lasted only seconds.
Because my folder was still sitting open.
And inside it were photographs of me from before I had ever met Adam.
“Then why was someone watching me?”
Trent didn’t answer.
Lucas did.
“Your father.”
I turned.
“What about my father?”
Lucas looked toward Evelyn.
She seemed to understand before I did.
“Oh God.”
I hated those words.
Every secret in the Vale family seemed to begin with someone saying them.
“My father was Thomas Bennett,” I said. “He was an accountant.”
Lucas nodded.
“At Vale Development.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“Nora—”
“My father worked for an insurance company.”
“That was after.”
I looked at Evelyn.
She couldn’t meet my eyes.
That told me Lucas was telling the truth.
“My father worked for you?”
Evelyn whispered, “For twelve years.”
The room became very quiet.
I remembered my father as a tired man who came home late.
A man who counted cash at the kitchen table.
A man who stopped laughing sometime around my eighth birthday.
Then one night, he disappeared.
My mother told me he had made mistakes.
Years later I learned he had gone to federal prison for financial fraud.
He died three years after his release.
Heart attack.
Alone in a cheap apartment in Milwaukee.
I had spent most of my life believing my father was a thief.
Lucas picked up one of the documents.
“He wasn’t.”
My throat tightened.
“What?”
“He discovered the first shell accounts.”
Ben slowly sat down.
“The same accounts Patrick used?”
“Early versions.”
Lucas nodded.
“Thomas found payments connected to North Lake. He questioned them. My father accused him of stealing.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
I stared at her.
“You knew?”
“I knew Vincent accused him.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
She said nothing.
I stepped closer.
“Did you know my father said he was innocent?”
“Yes.”
“And you did nothing?”
Her voice cracked.
“Yes.”
I laughed.
It was not a happy sound.
“Of course.”
“Nora.”
“First Helen. Then my father. Then Adam.”
Evelyn flinched with every name.
“How many people did your family destroy just because telling the truth was inconvenient?”
“Nora, I was wrong.”
“You were rich.”
She stared at me.
“You were powerful. You had attorneys. Investigators. People who answered your phone at three in the morning. My father had nothing.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I grabbed the folder.
“My mother worked two jobs after he went to prison. I stopped telling people his last name because children at school found the newspaper article.”
Evelyn’s face folded.
“I was eleven years old when somebody spray-painted THIEF on our garage.”
Nobody spoke.
I had never told Adam that.
Not even Adam.
I swallowed.
“Did Adam know?”
Lucas hesitated.
That hesitation hurt worse than any answer.
“When?” I asked.
“About six months before he died.”
I turned away.
Adam knew.
He knew my father had been framed.
And he never told me.
Ben stepped beside me.
“Maybe he was trying to prove it first.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“Don’t defend him.”
“I’m not.”
He glanced at the files.
“I’m just starting to understand why he was terrified.”
Dr. Trent opened another drawer.
“There’s more.”
Of course there was.
He removed an old cassette tape.
On the label, written in blue ink:
THOMAS BENNETT — PERSONAL STATEMENT.
My breath stopped.
“That’s my father’s handwriting.”
Trent placed the cassette into an ancient recorder.
The machine clicked.
Static filled the room.
Then I heard a voice I had not heard since I was twenty-one.
My father.
“If anything happens to me professionally, Patrick Sloan knows why.”
I covered my mouth.
His voice was younger than I remembered.
Stronger.
“I found payments that do not correspond to any legitimate Vale property. Some involve North Lake. Some involve accounts controlled by Vincent Vale.”
Evelyn sat down.
My father continued.
“I approached Mrs. Evelyn Vale once. She told me Vincent handled financial matters and asked me not to make accusations without evidence.”
Evelyn whispered, “I remember.”
I didn’t look at her.
“I found the evidence.”
The tape hissed.
“Patrick Sloan asked me to destroy it. I refused.”
A door sounded somewhere on the recording.
Then my father’s voice dropped.
“If my daughter Nora ever hears this, tell her one thing.”
My chest tightened.
“I did not steal.”
I bent forward.
Ben caught my arm.
My father continued.
“I made mistakes. I was afraid. But I did not steal from anyone.”
The tape ended.
I cried then.
Not beautifully.
Not quietly.
Twenty years of shame came out of me on the dirty basement floor of a forgotten building.
My father had been innocent.
And Adam had died trying to prove it.
Evelyn approached.
She stopped several feet away.
“I’m sorry.”
I wiped my face.
“You don’t get forgiveness because you finally feel guilty.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I have nothing else.”
For once, I believed her.
Ben picked up another envelope.
“There’s an address here.”
Dr. Trent frowned.
“What address?”
Ben showed him.
BLUEBIRD PHOTOGRAPHY
Rockford, Illinois.
Lucas stared at the handwriting.
“Helen.”
Ben looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“She wanted to be a photographer.”
Trent nodded.
“That was her studio.”
“Is it still there?”
“I don’t know.”
Ben put the envelope in his coat.
“We’re finding out.”
I stood.
“So am I.”
Lucas immediately said, “Nora—”
I turned on him.
“You don’t get to tell me where to go.”
He shut his mouth.
Good.
Outside, Detective Alvarez was making calls.
She listened while I explained.
“Rockford is outside my current search perimeter.”
“Then expand it.”
“Nora.”
“Patrick is still free.”
“I know.”
“He knows we found this place.”
“I know.”
“He will go wherever Helen hid the rest.”
Alvarez stared at me for several seconds.
Then she grabbed her radio.
“Two cars.”
Ben and I headed toward the SUV.
Lucas followed.
I stopped.
“No.”
His expression hardened.
“You need me.”
“I need people who tell the truth.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re twenty-nine years late.”
That hit him.
He stayed behind.
As Ben opened the driver’s door, my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
One photograph.
Bluebird Photography.
Taken at night.
Smoke was coming from an upstairs window.
Beneath it:
YOU ARE ALWAYS ONE STEP TOO LATE.
Ben looked at the screen.
Then at me.
“That’s Helen’s studio.”
May you like
I climbed in.
“Drive.”
