Chapter 5: The Second Envelope
Monday morning came with rain.
Daniel arrived at my door at eight o'clock with two cups of coffee and his coat still wet from the walk up the path.
He didn't say good morning.
He just handed me a cup and sat down at the kitchen table.
We called Hargrove & Associates at nine, the moment the office opened.
A man answered this time.
He identified himself as Mr.
Hargrove.
"Yes," he said, when Daniel explained who we were.
"I've been expecting your call.
I owe you an apology.
There was an administrative error on Saturday — the courier was given only one envelope when he should have been given two.
The second envelope was still in our files when I came in this morning.
I can have it delivered to you today, or you're welcome to come and collect it."
"We'll come now," Daniel said.
We were in the car twenty minutes later.
The office was a quiet building on a tree-lined street — small, professional, the kind of place that handled estates and wills and the careful business of endings.
Mr.
Hargrove met us in the lobby himself.
He was older than I expected, with a measured way of speaking that suggested he had delivered difficult news many times before.
He led us to a private room and set a sealed envelope on the table in front of Daniel.
"Mr.
Whitmore left very specific instructions," he said.
"This envelope is to be opened by Daniel Whitmore only, in the presence of his mother.
Those were the exact terms."
Daniel looked at me.
I nodded.
Mr.
Hargrove stepped out and closed the door.
Daniel broke the seal.
Inside was a smaller envelope, a USB drive, and a single handwritten note.
Daniel read the note first, silently.
His face changed as he read — not dramatically, not all at once, but in the way a person's face changes when something they half-suspected is confirmed.
He set the note down and slid it toward me.
It said: *Daniel — the drive contains everything.
Bank records.
Correspondence.
A recorded phone call from the week before I left.
Gerald is on the recording.
So is someone else.
Play it when you are ready.
But be prepared.
The second voice will hurt your mother more than mine ever did.*
I picked up the USB drive.
It was small and ordinary, the kind you could buy anywhere.
"Do you have your laptop?" I asked.
Daniel reached into his bag.
We sat in that quiet room in Mr.
Hargrove's office and Daniel opened the first file.
It was an audio recording.
Forty-three minutes long.
Dated three weeks before Robert's disappearance.
Daniel pressed play.
Gerald's voice came through the speaker first — older than I remembered, but unmistakable.
Confident.
The voice of a man who was used to getting what he wanted.
And then the second voice.
I recognized it before the first sentence was finished.
My hand went flat on the table.
"That's—" I started.
May you like
"I know," Daniel said.
It was my sister, Patricia.
