[CHAPTER 9]
I thought I had become impossible to shock.
I was wrong.
“My father?”
Karen Holt nodded.
“No.”
“I know what I saw.”
“My father died ten years ago.”
Her face tightened.
“Then someone wanted you to believe that too.”
Caroline stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor.
“Describe him.”
Karen did.
Tall.
White hair.
A slight limp in his left leg.
A scar near his chin.
Caroline went pale.
“That’s Dad.”
I could not process it.
Arthur Mercer had supposedly died of a heart attack.
Unlike Daniel, there had been a body.
I had attended the funeral.
I had touched his hand at the viewing.
“This is impossible.”
Karen shook her head.
“Maybe I’m mistaken about who he was. But Vivian called him Arthur.”
The room tilted.
Detective Ruiz began asking questions.
Karen explained that shortly before sunrise, she saw Vivian pushing Thomas in a wheelchair toward a restricted loading entrance.
Thomas was drowsy but awake.
An older man waited beside a van.
They argued.
“He kept saying, ‘This isn’t what we agreed.’”
My heart pounded.
“What did my mother say?”
Karen looked at me.
“She said, ‘Then you should have stopped me sooner.’”
Caroline whispered, “Dad was alive.”
Maybe.
Or someone had impersonated him.
At this point, both seemed possible.
Ruiz asked Karen why she stayed silent.
Karen cried.
“My husband was sick. I needed the job. Mr. Pike told me the child had been transferred privately because of a custody issue.”
“Did you believe him?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
“Later I saw the death announcement.”
She looked at me.
“I knew something was wrong.”
Anger rose.
“You could have called me.”
“I know.”
“For six years.”
“I know.”
I wanted to scream at her.
Then I remembered Daniel.
Gordon.
Caroline.
Everyone my mother had controlled through fear.
Vivian’s greatest weapon was not money.
It was convincing people they were powerless.
Thomas surprised me.
“Did Grandma threaten you?”
Karen nodded.
“She told me my husband’s medical insurance could disappear if I caused trouble.”
Thomas looked at me.
“See?”
I understood.
He was not excusing her.
He was recognizing the pattern.
Ruiz began searching death and property records connected to my father.
Arthur’s official death was real enough on paper.
Hospital.
Funeral home.
Cemetery.
But when investigators contacted the cemetery, another problem appeared.
The family plot had been relocated after flooding five years earlier.
Several caskets had been damaged.
Arthur’s could not be conclusively identified.
Caroline whispered, “This family is insane.”
I almost laughed.
Then Ruiz received old insurance photographs from my father’s funeral home.
The deceased man resembled Arthur.
But facial swelling and embalming made certainty difficult.
A fingerprint comparison was impossible because his original records were not digitized.
We needed another path.
Karen provided it.
“The older man had a ring.”
“What kind?”
“Gold. Square black stone.”
Caroline and I looked at each other.
Dad’s college ring.
He wore it every day.
“What happened after the van left?” Ruiz asked.
“Vivian came back inside.”
“With Thomas?”
“No.”
“With Arthur?”
“No.”
That meant Dad might have left with Thomas.
Thomas shook his head.
“I don’t remember him.”
“You were sedated.”
“I remember the van.”
We turned.
He closed his eyes.
“I thought it was a dream.”
“What do you remember?”
“A man crying.”
My chest tightened.
“What did he say?”
Thomas pressed his fingers to his forehead.
“He kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, little man.’”
Caroline began crying.
Dad always called Thomas little man.
Always.
I gripped the table.
“Where did he take you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anything. A smell. A sound.”
Thomas concentrated.
“Train tracks.”
Ruiz made a note.
“Anything else?”
“A dog barking.”
He laughed nervously.
“That probably doesn’t help.”
“It might.”
Then he whispered, “There was a red barn.”
Caroline looked up.
“Dad’s cabin.”
I stared at her.
“What cabin?”
“He had property near Mill Creek.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Mom hated it. Dad bought it before they married.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“You were little when I disappeared.”
Caroline searched her phone.
The property was no longer listed under Arthur Mercer.
It had been transferred to a holding company.
Ruiz traced the company.
The registered agent was Everett Sloan.
The missing lawyer.
Police obtained a warrant.
I was not allowed to go.
Again.
I paced for two hours.
Thomas stayed with me.
Emily drew pictures at the kitchen table.
Caroline stared at the wall.
Then Ruiz called.
“They found the cabin.”
“And?”
“Someone has been living there.”
My heart hammered.
“Who?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Is anyone there?”
“No.”
Police found fresh food.
Medication.
Men’s clothing.
Photographs of Caroline and me.
Stacks of newspapers.
And a wall covered with notes about Vivian.
My father had been investigating her.
For years.
They also found a recent photograph.
Arthur.
Older.
Much older.
But unmistakably my father.
Standing beside Daniel.
The date printed on the image was eight months ago.
I could not breathe.
“Dad is alive.”
Caroline sank into a chair.
“Dad is alive.”
Then Ruiz said something worse.
“There’s blood in the cabin.”
My entire body went cold.
“How much?”
“Not enough to assume the worst.”
“Whose?”
“We’re testing it.”
Police also found a smashed phone.
The last outgoing call had been placed two nights earlier.
To Vivian.
The last incoming call came from a prepaid number.
Investigators traced that phone.
It had pinged near the motel where Vivian met Gordon Pike.
Dad had been tracking her.
Or she had been tracking him.
Before Ruiz ended the call, she said officers discovered one more item.
A handwritten note beneath the cabin floorboards.
It was addressed to me.
Sarah,
If you are reading this, Vivian finally lost control.
Do not believe my death.
Do not believe Daniel’s.
Do not believe Thomas’s.
She survives by making people disappear on paper before she destroys them in life.
I failed Caroline.
I failed you.
I will not fail your children.
The note ended with an address.
A church in a town forty miles away.
And a date.
Tomorrow.
My father was expecting someone there.
Maybe me.
May you like
Maybe Vivian.
Either way, for the first time in decades, Arthur Mercer was stepping out of the grave my mother had built for him.
