Chapter 7: The Print Shop on the East Side
The building was exactly where Garrett had said.
A narrow street two blocks from the lake, the kind of block that has been the same for forty years — a dry cleaner, a hardware store, a print shop with a hand-lettered sign in the window.
I told Marcus to park at the end of the street and walked the rest of the way alone.
The bell above the door rang when I pushed it open.
The smell of ink and warm paper.
A radio playing low somewhere in the back.
A man behind the counter was trimming a stack of flyers with a long-handled cutter, his back to the door, and he didn't turn around immediately.
"Be right with you," he said.
I didn't say anything.
He turned around.
Six years is a long time.
His hair was shorter.
There was a scar along his left jaw that hadn't been there before.
He was thinner than I remembered, and there was something careful in the way he held himself — the posture of a man who has spent years expecting bad news from unexpected directions.
He looked at me for a long moment without moving.
"Garrett called," he said finally.
"I know."
"He said —" He stopped.
He set the trimmer down on the counter.
"He said he lied to me.
About the fire.
About you."
"He did."
Ewan looked at his hands.
"I spent four years believing you wanted me d*ad."
"I spent six years believing you were d*ad."
He looked up.
His jaw was working, the way it used to when we were young and he was trying not to show something.
"Mom," he said.
"Garrett said she's —"
"She's alive.
She's at the estate.
She can't speak anymore, but she's there." I paused.
"She wrote you letters.
She got them out through the nurse."
Something crossed his face that I hadn't seen since we were children — a kind of breaking open, too fast to stop.
He turned away and put both hands on the counter and stood there with his head down.
I waited.
In my line of work you learn that some silences need to be filled and some need to be left alone.
This was the second kind.
After a while he straightened up and turned back around.
His eyes were red.
He didn't apologize for it.
"The woman," he said.
"Celeste.
Garrett said she was the one paying him."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"The inheritance.
Father's estate.
With you legally d*ad, it consolidated.
She needed the full amount."
He was quiet for a moment.
"She was going to marry you for money."
"She was going to marry me for a signature and thirty days of legal standing." I reached into my coat and took out the small brass key.
"She left this behind when she ran.
I need to know if you recognize the bank name on it."
He took the key and looked at it.
His expression changed.
"I know this bank," he said.
"There's a branch two streets from here.
I walked past it every day for a year." He turned the key over.
"She has a box there?"
"She had a box there.
I don't know what's in it."
He handed the key back.
"Then let's go find out."
We walked out of the print shop together into the cold morning air.
He fell into step beside me the way he always had — slightly to my left, half a pace back, the old habit from when we were young and I was the one who walked into rooms first.
I hadn't thought about that in years.
I thought about it now.
"The nurse," Ewan said as we walked.
"Delia.
Garrett said she was the one who kept Mom's letters."
"She was there the night of the fire," I said.
"You carried her out."
He was quiet for a few steps.
"I remember her.
She was just a kid."
"She spent four years trying to find out what happened to you.
That's why she took the position at the house."
He stopped walking.
I stopped too.
"She did that for me?" he said.
"She did it because you saved her life and then disappeared, and she needed to know why." I looked at him.
"She's in a hospital in Chicago with a bandaged hand and two splinted fingers because Celeste tried to silence her before she could tell me any of this."
Ewan's face went very still.
"Is she all right?"
"She will be."
He started walking again.
His pace was slightly faster now.
The bank was where he said it was.
The branch manager verified the key against the box registration and led us to a private room.
I opened the box.
Inside was a single folder.
Inside the folder were documents — financial records, wire transfer confirmations, a copy of the forged power-of-attorney amendment with a handwriting comparison note clipped to the front, and a letter in Celeste's handwriting addressed to a name I didn't recognize, dated three weeks ago.
She had kept her own records.
Organized, dated, cross-referenced.
The kind of file a careful person keeps when they want to be able to prove, if necessary, that someone else was responsible.
She had been planning an exit long before last night.
I closed the folder.
"She was going to use this to protect herself if anything went wrong."
"It went wrong," Ewan said.
May you like
"It did." I picked up the folder.
"Now it protects us instead."
