Chapter 2 - The Extra Click
I read the message twice.
Then a third time, because the words refused to arrange themselves into anything my mind was willing to accept.
Want to know who killed your mother?
My thumb hovered over the screen.
Behind me, the old wall clock kept working as if nothing in the room had changed.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick-click.
I turned toward it.
For as long as I could remember, that clock had made a tiny extra sound every so often, a dry little hitch between one second and the next. Mom used to call it "the stubborn beat."
I had not thought about that in years.
"Who is it?" Claire asked.
I locked the phone before she could see my face.
"Unknown number."
My father moved before I finished speaking.
"Give me the phone."
I stepped away from him.
"No."
"Evelyn."
"You don't get to use that voice anymore."
His jaw tightened.
It was strange how quickly authority could become theater once you recognized the costume.
Claire rose with Lily still pressed against her side. Noah had moved closer to them, but his eyes stayed on me.
"Is it about Mom?" he asked.
I hated that he had learned enough in the last ten minutes to ask that question.
"Take the kids upstairs," I told Claire.
"I'm not leaving you alone with him."
"You're not. You're taking your children out of this room."
Claire hesitated, then nodded.
As she guided Lily toward the stairs, Noah remained where he was.
"Noah," Claire said.
He reached into the pocket of his jeans.
"I took one."
My father went rigid.
Noah held out a photograph.
It was smaller than the others in Claire's envelope, an old square print with a white border gone yellow at the edges.
A much younger version of my father stood in a hospital corridor wearing a Virginia State Police uniform.
Beside him was my mother.
She looked no older than twenty-eight, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, one hand resting on the clear plastic crib of a newborn.
The baby wore a paper bracelet.
The image was grainy, but one line had been written thickly enough to read.
E. MERCER.
My mouth went dry.
I flipped the photograph over.
Four characters had been written in blue ink.
417.
"Where did you get this?" I asked.
"The box."
"Did Grandpa see you take it?"
Noah shook his head.
My father sat down.
Not slowly.
His knees simply seemed to stop trusting him.
Claire crossed the room and took the photograph from my hand.
"Mercer?"
She looked at me.
"That's not our name."
The phone vibrated again.
This time there was no message.
There was an audio file.
Nine seconds long.
My father stood so quickly the chair legs scraped the floor.
"Do not play that."
I looked at him.
"You know what it is?"
"Evelyn."
I pressed play.
Static filled the room.
Then my mother's voice came through the speaker.
Older than she was in the hospital photograph. Tired. Breathless.
"Richard, if you won't tell her, I will."
A pause.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick-click.
Then a man's voice, low and controlled.
"You won't make it to morning."
The file ended.
No one moved.
Claire's hand flew to her mouth.
My father stared at the phone like it had opened its eyes.
"Whose voice was that?" I asked.
He said nothing.
"Dad."
His gaze dropped to the floor.
"I don't know."
The lie came too quickly.
I had heard that cadence in courtrooms for twelve years. The reflexive denial. The answer built before the question had fully arrived.
"Try again."
"I said I don't know."
"And I said try again."
Claire moved between us, not to protect him, but to keep me from stepping closer.
"Evelyn. Read the letter. All of it."
I unfolded the yellowed pages.
Mom's handwriting was familiar enough to hurt.
She had always leaned too hard on capital letters, pressing the pen deep into the paper whenever she was angry.
The first paragraph was the one Claire had shown me.
The second was worse.
Evelyn, start with 417. Do not believe any record that says Mercer died. Ask why your father signed a statement he knew was false. And if you ever hear the clock lose its beat, remember that sound. It tells you where we were.
Below that, one final line had been underlined twice.
Jonathan knows what happened on the road.
My eyes stopped on the name.
There were thousands of Jonathans in Virginia.
Only one mattered to me.
Jonathan Reed had been my first supervisor after law school.
He had taught me how to prepare a witness without putting words in her mouth. How to sit in silence after asking a hard question. How never to confuse a clean suit with a clean conscience.
He was sixty-one now, retired from public service and teaching part-time at Georgetown.
He sent me a birthday card every year.
I read the sentence again.
Jonathan knows what happened on the road.
"Reed?" I asked.
My father looked away.
That was answer enough.
Claire whispered, "Oh God."
I folded the letter carefully because my hands had started shaking.
"What was Case 417?"
My father rubbed both palms over his face.
"Not a case."
"What, then?"
"A file number."
"For what?"
He looked at the photograph in Claire's hand.
"A placement."
"What kind of placement?"
He did not answer.
I felt the room tilt, not physically, but in the way a familiar place can suddenly stop belonging to your memory of it.
"Was I adopted?"
Claire inhaled sharply.
My father closed his eyes.
"Yes."
The word was almost soundless.
Something inside me went very still.
"You told me Mom nearly died giving birth to me."
"Your mother loved you."
"That was not my question."
"She loved you from the first night we brought you home."
"That was not my question."
My voice rose this time.
Lily whimpered on the stairs.
I stopped.
Claire immediately took both children upstairs. I waited until I heard a bedroom door close.
Then I turned back to my father.
"Who was Mercer?"
He stared at the clock.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick-click.
"Anna Mercer," he said.
"My biological mother?"
His throat moved.
"Yes."
"Is she dead?"
He looked at the letter in my hand.
"I was told she was."
"By whom?"
He did not need to say the name.
My phone vibrated a third time.
A new message appeared.
MIDNIGHT. UNION STATION. LOCKER 28. COME ALONE.
A second line followed.
BRING THE PHOTO. NOT YOUR FATHER.
I showed the screen to Claire when she came back downstairs.
My father saw it too.
"You're not going."
"You lost the right to decide that thirty-five years ago."
"You don't know who this is."
"Apparently they know more about my life than I do."
He grabbed my wrist.
Not hard.
Hard enough.
I looked down at his hand.
He let go immediately.
"If they have the original recording," he said, "they can bury me."
"For what?"
He turned toward the dark window.
For several seconds he said nothing.
Then his shoulders dropped.
"Your mother did not die when the police report says she died."
I could hear the blood moving in my ears.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I lied to the investigators. I signed a statement I knew was false. I hid evidence. I helped make certain questions disappear."
Claire stared at him.
"Why?"
My father's face changed.
Not into fear this time.
Into shame.
"Because nineteen years ago, I thought losing my daughters would be worse than living with what I'd done."
I stepped closer.
"Did you kill Mom?"
He looked me directly in the eyes.
"No."
I waited.
He knew I would.
The clock made its extra click.
May you like
My father swallowed.
"But I helped the man who did."
