Chapter 3: The Name He Wouldn't Say
Aiden set the photograph down on the table between us.
He didn't let go of it right away.
His fingers stayed on the edge, like he was deciding something.
"Aiden." My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"Who is that man?"
He finally pulled his hand back.
"I don't know."
"You went pale the moment you saw it."
"I was surprised.
That's all."
"That's not all." I picked up the photograph myself.
The man in it was standing close to Harold's car — not passing by, not coincidentally nearby.
Standing next to it, one hand resting on the door frame.
The timestamp read 7:14 AM.
Harold had left the house at 7:10 that morning.
I remembered because I'd watched him go from the kitchen window, coffee in hand.
I'd waved.
He'd waved back.
He was g*ne before noon.
"Aiden, Amelia was twelve years old when she hid this." I held the photo up.
"Twelve.
She sewed it inside a crocheted flower and never told me.
Do you understand what that means?
She was protecting me from something.
A child was protecting her mother." My throat tightened.
"I need to know what she knew."
Aiden sat down heavily in the chair across from me.
He rubbed both hands over his face.
"There's something I should have told you before now," he said.
The room went very quiet.
"Before I met you — about two years before — I was working a private insurance investigation.
A wrongful d@ath claim.
The family of a man who d*ed in a single-vehicle accident." He stopped.
I didn't move.
"The man's name was Harold Voss."
The photograph was still in my hand.
I became aware of how tightly I was holding it.
"You investigated Harold's accident," I said.
"Yes."
"And you never told me."
"I didn't know you were his wife.
Not at first.
When I realized — when I understood who you were — we were already six months in and I didn't know how to—"
"Did you close the case?"
He looked up.
"What?"
"The investigation.
Did you close it as an accident?"
A long pause.
"No.
I didn't."
I put the photograph down.
My hands were shaking again, but differently now — not from grief.
From something harder.
"Tell me everything," I said.
"From the beginning.
Leave nothing out."
Aiden looked at the photograph, then at me.
Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone.
He scrolled for a moment, then turned the screen toward me.
It was the same man.
Younger in this version, standing outside what looked like an office building.
Below the image was a name.
Raymond Colt.
"He was Harold's business partner," Aiden said.
"And three weeks before the accident, Harold had hired a solicitor to dissolve their partnership.
He'd found evidence that Raymond had been draining the company accounts for years."
I stared at the name on the screen.
"Raymond knew," Aiden said quietly.
"And Harold never made it to that solicitor's appointment."
I thought of Amelia.
Twelve years old, sick, losing her hair, lying in a hospital bed — and somehow, somehow, she had known this name.
Known this face.
Known enough to hide a photograph inside a crocheted flower and sew it shut.
"How did she get this photo?" I whispered.
"That," Aiden said, "is what I've been trying to figure out for two years."
My phone buzzed on the table.
I glanced down.
An unknown number.
A text message, four words long.
May you like
*Stop looking.
For both.*
