Chapter 4: What My Mother Knew
I was back at the hospital before six.
Delia was awake.
Marcus was in the chair by the door with his eyes open, which meant he hadn't slept.
I sent him out for coffee and pulled the chair close to the bed.
"The man in the photograph," I said.
"The one Celeste has been paying.
Tell me his name."
Delia looked at the bandage on her hand.
"His name is Garrett Foss.
He ran dock security at Pier 44 the night of the fire."
Garrett Foss.
Nine years with the organization.
He had moved to logistics four years ago at his own request.
I had approved the transfer without a second thought because men who ask for quieter work after a long stretch on the docks are usually just tired.
"He was there the night Ewan went in," Delia said.
"He's the one who got Ewan out.
But he didn't bring him to a hospital.
He brought him somewhere else first."
"Where."
"A private facility.
Out of state.
Ewan had a head injury — serious enough that he wasn't coherent for weeks.
By the time he understood what had happened, Garrett had already told him something." She stopped.
"He told Ewan that you had ordered the fire."
The room was very quiet.
"That I ordered it."
"That you wanted him gone.
That there was a dispute over the inheritance — your father's holdings — and that you had decided to resolve it." She said it plainly, without softening it.
"Ewan believed him.
He had no reason not to.
He woke up in a strange place with a man telling him his brother had tried to kjll him.
And you never came."
"Because I thought he was d*ad."
"I know that.
Your mother knew that.
But Ewan didn't."
I stood up and walked to the window.
The snow had stopped.
The sky was the flat grey of early morning, the kind that gives nothing back.
"Why would Garrett do that?" I said.
"What did Celeste offer him?"
"A position.
Money.
And protection from you — because Garrett had been skimming from the dock accounts for two years before the fire.
He needed someone powerful enough to keep you from looking too closely." She paused.
"Celeste found out about the skimming.
She used it.
She offered him cover in exchange for Ewan's silence and his location."
"She's known where Ewan is for four years."
"Yes."
I turned back from the window.
"Why did she want him hidden?
What does she gain?"
Delia looked at me steadily.
"Your father's estate.
The full inheritance.
There's a clause — your mother told me about it the last week she could still speak clearly.
If Ewan is alive and reachable, the estate divides equally.
If he is legally d*ad, it consolidates.
Celeste's family has been in debt for eleven years.
She needed the full amount, not half."
The signature.
That was what Delia had said in Part 1 — the woman I was about to marry had never needed me at all.
Only a signature.
A signature on a marriage certificate that would give her legal standing.
And a brother who stayed d*ad.
"There's something else," Delia said.
I looked at her.
"Ewan has been trying to reach your mother for two years.
He didn't know she'd lost her speech.
He sent letters." She reached under her pillow with her uninjured hand and brought out an envelope, worn at the edges, the paper soft from handling.
"She gave me this the last night she could hold a pen.
She asked me to keep it until the right moment."
I took it.
My name was on the front in my mother's handwriting.
"She knew you'd find out eventually," Delia said quietly.
"She just needed someone to make sure the letter survived long enough to reach you."
I didn't open it yet.
I held it in both hands and looked at my mother's writing — the careful letters, the slight tremor already showing in the loop of the N — and understood that the woman lying in that bed upstairs had been carrying this alone for two years, unable to speak it, trusting a nurse she had known for less than a year with the most important thing she had left to give.
"She trusted you with this," I said.
"She didn't have anyone else," Delia said.
And then, after a moment: "Neither did I."
I looked up.
"Ewan carried me out of that fire," she said.
"I spent four years trying to find out what happened to him.
That's why I took the position at your house.
I needed to get close enough to find the truth." She held my gaze.
"I wasn't just your mother's nurse.
I was looking for your brother."
May you like
The envelope was still in my hands.
And somewhere in this city, Garrett Foss was sitting in a logistics office, waiting for a morning that was about to go very differently than he expected.
