Chapter 3 - The Photograph
I bent for the photograph, but Dad caught my wrist.
“Leave it for Ellis.”
“Why are you standing next to Daniel in that picture?”
His silence answered before his words did. “Not here.”
At an urgent-care clinic twenty minutes away, a nurse examined my scalded skin while Lily drew crooked purple stars on a clipboard. The doctor said the burns were painful but likely to heal with proper treatment. She documented the bruising and offered a confidential conversation about getting somewhere safe. For once, I didn't say everything was fine.
Dad sat beside the door. His hands, stained by thirty years of repairing engines, looked too large around the paper cup of coffee. “I need you to hear something,” he said. “I was never Daniel's friend. I was his father's business partner.”
I almost laughed. “Your shop?”
“Before your mom died, I designed a tracking system for construction equipment. Walter Harrington financed it. We formed a company. Walter wanted me out when the software started making money.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I signed a settlement. There were threats. Then you brought Daniel home. You looked happy, Sarah. I was afraid you'd think I was trying to ruin it.”
“That decision wasn't yours to make.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn't. I'm sorry.”
I stared at him. Dad had always been the steady one, the man who fixed things without complaining. Hearing him apologize did not erase the five years I had spent inside the Harrington walls, but it cracked open the idea that there might be a way out.
My phone lit up. Daniel: COME HOME. WE CAN HANDLE THIS PRIVATELY.
I deleted the preview without answering.
Another message appeared, this one from a number I didn't know: Ask Nora about the blue ledger. Don't trust the cameras.
I showed Dad. He read it twice.
“Who is Nora?”
“Evelyn's housekeeper. She’s worked there forever.”
My phone rang again. This time it wasn't Daniel. A shaky woman's voice whispered, “Mrs. Harrington? It's Nora. They know I sent the message.”
May you like
Then something crashed on her end of the line, and the call went dead.
