Chapter 4 - Dad Never Drowned
The room cleared within minutes.
Brooke was escorted into the hallway while Detective Reed called his supervisor. Mom stayed beside my bed, crying so hard she could barely speak.
I finally forced out one word.
“Dad?”
Mom grabbed my hand.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I swear to you, I don’t know.”
But she was hiding something.
I had known her face my entire life. I knew the difference between grief and guilt.
“Tell,” I rasped.
She closed her eyes.
“Your father called me three weeks after the boat disappeared.”
The monitor beside me began to race.
Nurse Carter looked over sharply.
Mom kept going.
“He said he was alive. He said I couldn’t tell you. He said somebody had been stealing from the company and he needed time to prove it.”
My father, Daniel Bennett, had founded Bennett Medical Supply from a rented warehouse and turned it into a company worth nearly eighty million dollars.
Six months earlier, his fishing boat had been found drifting twelve miles off the coast. Blood on the deck. No body.
The Coast Guard called it a probable accidental death.
We held a funeral with an empty casket.
Brooke cried harder than anyone.
“When did you last hear from him?” I asked.
Mom looked at the floor.
“Five days ago.”
Five days.
Two days before I woke up broken in a hospital bed.
“What… said?”
“He said he had proof. He said he was coming home.”
My fingers tightened around the blanket.
“Who?”
Mom shook her head. “He wouldn’t say over the phone. But he told me one thing.”
She leaned closer.
“Claire, he said not to trust anyone who benefited from his death.”
The door opened.
Brooke stood there alone.
No officer beside her.
No one had heard her enter.
Her eyes were fixed on Mom.
“So,” she said quietly. “You finally told her.”
Mom went white.
Brooke closed the door behind her.
May you like
Then she reached into the pocket of her charcoal-gray shirt and pulled out my phone.
“I was hoping we could avoid this conversation.”
