Chapter 3: What Frank Carried In
The officers guided the man toward the door.
His companion — the woman who had told us we didn't belong — gathered her bag without looking at anyone.
Her chair scraped the floor.
Nobody watched her leave.
Frank was still on one knee in front of Lindsey.
"You got taller," he said.
"You were gone a long time," Lindsey said.
Frank's jaw tightened.
He nodded once, slowly, like the words had landed exactly where they were meant to.
He stood and looked at me.
Up close, I could see how much older he looked than I'd imagined from the photographs my son-in-law Daniel had kept on the mantle.
His hair had gone fully white.
There were deep lines around his eyes that hadn't been there in those pictures.
"I'm Eleanor," I said.
Because I didn't know what else to say.
"I know who you are." He put out his hand.
"Frank Calloway.
Daniel was my son."
We shook hands in the middle of a café that had slowly returned to its own quiet business, as if two police officers escorting a man out the front door was something that happened every afternoon.
The young waitress appeared beside us.
"Can I get you anything?"
Frank looked at Lindsey's barely-touched pie.
"Another slice of apple," he said.
"And whatever she's having."
We moved to a larger table near the back.
Lindsey sat between us, his paper cup of ice cream in both hands now, watching Frank the way children watch someone they're not sure they're allowed to trust yet.
"Why did you stop calling?" I asked.
I hadn't planned to say it that fast.
But I was 75 and I had stopped having the patience for long approaches.
Frank wrapped both hands around his coffee cup.
"Because I was ashamed."
"Of what?"
He looked at Lindsey, then back at me.
"Of what I didn't do.
Of what I should have known sooner." He paused.
"That man they just walked out of here — his name is Gerald Marsh.
He was Daniel's business partner."
I set down my fork.
"Daniel and Gerald ran a small investment firm together.
Three years ago, Gerald began moving client funds into accounts that didn't exist.
Daniel found out eight months before the accident." Frank's voice stayed level, but his hands tightened around the cup.
"He came to me.
He had documents.
He wanted to go to the authorities."
"And?"
"I told him to wait.
I told him to be sure.
I told him we needed a lawyer first, that we needed to be careful." He stopped.
"I was protecting the family name.
My family's name.
We had invested in that firm too."
Lindsey had gone very still.
"I told Daniel to wait," Frank said again, quieter now.
"And three weeks later, he and your daughter were gone."
The café noise continued around us — cups, keyboards, low voices.
None of it touched our table.
"You think Gerald had something to do with the accident," I said.
Frank didn't answer immediately.
He reached into the inside pocket of his gray coat and placed a folded envelope on the table between us.
"I think," he said carefully, "that the police have been asking that same question for the last six months.
And I think that's why they were here today."
I looked at the envelope.
I didn't pick it up.
"What's in there?"
May you like
"The last email Daniel sent me," Frank said.
"The night before the accident."
