CHAPTER 3 — THE MAN WHO KNEW MY FAMILY
The next morning, I pretended everything was normal.
I made Emily breakfast.
I kissed Claire goodbye.
Then I told them I was going to work.
I didn't.
Instead, I drove to the address connected to the mysterious number in Claire's deleted messages.
The address belonged to an old office downtown.
When I arrived, I recognized the man standing outside.
It was him.
The man from the pool.
He looked at me calmly.
“You shouldn't have come here,” he said.
I grabbed him by the collar.
“You were at my house.”
He didn't resist.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your wife asked me to come.”
My grip tightened.
“My wife?”
“She didn't tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
He looked away.
Then he said something I never expected.
“Your daughter wasn't supposed to fall into the pool.”
I froze.
“What did you say?”
“It wasn't supposed to happen that way.”
“What was supposed to happen?”
He stared directly into my eyes.
“You were supposed to be at the house.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“You were supposed to come home at four.”
“But I didn't.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He swallowed.
“Something changed.”
I pushed him against the wall.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Marcus.”
“Why were you watching my family?”
“I wasn't watching your family.”
“Then what were you doing?”
He hesitated.
“Protecting Emily.”
I almost laughed.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
He reached into his pocket.
I immediately stepped back.
He pulled out a small envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
I stared at it.
It showed Emily standing beside an older man.
The man was my father.
My father had been dead for seven years.
I looked at Marcus.
“Where did you get this?”
“Your father gave it to me.”
“That’s impossible.”
“He gave it to me six months before he died.”
My hands went cold.
“What does this have to do with Emily?”
Marcus looked at me.
“Everything.”
Then he walked away.
I stood there holding the photograph.
On the back was a handwritten sentence in my father's handwriting.
“When the time comes, protect my granddaughter from the people closest to her.”
I had spent seven years believing my father died peacefully.
Now I realized he had known something.
May you like
Something dangerous.
Something he had never told me.
