Chapter 6: Daniel's Number
No one spoke.
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked.
A car passed outside.
The tea went cold.
"That's not possible," Thomas said.
"I know what it looks like," Gerald said.
"Someone is using my dead brother's phone number to send messages to my wife."
"I know."
"Dad." Thomas's voice cracked on the word, just slightly.
"Who has that number?"
"Numbers get recycled," I said, because someone had to say it.
"Phone companies reassign them.
It could be anyone."
"Or," Diane said from my phone — I'd put her on speaker without thinking, instinct pulling my hand to the screen the moment Gerald spoke — "someone kept that SIM card for fourteen years and just used it."
The room absorbed that.
"Is that possible?" I asked Gerald.
He didn't answer immediately.
He stood up, slowly, and walked to the bookcase against the far wall.
He opened the bottom cabinet — the one with the sliding door that I'd always assumed held old photo albums — and reached inside.
He came back with a small cardboard box.
The kind banks use for old cheque books.
He set it on the table.
"After Daniel died," he said, "Eleanor kept everything.
His wallet.
His keys.
His phone." He looked at the box.
"She couldn't bring herself to cancel the contract.
She kept paying the bill for two years until the provider finally suspended it for non-use.
She put the phone in here with the rest."
Thomas reached for the box.
Gerald put his hand on top of it.
"It's empty," he said.
"I checked this morning, after you called.
The phone is gone."
Thomas looked at his father's hand on the box.
"When did you check?"
"This morning.
After your call."
"You knew to check this morning."
Gerald lifted his hand.
"Yes."
"Because you already suspected someone had taken it."
A long pause.
"I found the cabinet open two weeks ago.
I thought Eleanor had been looking through it.
I didn't ask her about it.
I should have."
"Who else has been in this house?" I said.
"Family.
The usual." Gerald sat back down.
"Your cousin Marcus came for dinner last month.
He stayed the night — the spare room.
He was here alone in the morning while Eleanor and I went to the early service."
Thomas went very still.
Marcus.
I turned the name over.
I had met him four or five times over nine years.
Quiet, watchful, always slightly outside the group in a way I'd attributed to shyness.
He worked in finance — something with investments, I'd never been entirely clear on the details.
"Marcus knew Daniel," Thomas said.
It wasn't a question.
"They were close," Gerald said.
"Closer than you knew, maybe.
After Daniel died, Marcus took it hard.
He stayed in touch with us more than most of the family did." He paused.
"He was the one who told Eleanor about the account.
Three years ago.
He said he'd come across it by accident — an old document of Daniel's he'd kept.
He said he thought we should know it still existed."
"And then the deposits started," I said.
"And then the deposits started," Gerald confirmed.
Thomas stood up.
He walked to the window and stood with his back to us, looking out at the empty driveway.
"He's been putting money into an account in my name," Thomas said.
"Using Daniel's phone to warn Sarah not to let me investigate.
And his explanation for finding the account in the first place was a document he just happened to have."
"That's what it looks like," Gerald said.
"Why?" I said.
"What does he gain from putting money into Thomas's account?"
Gerald looked at his hands.
"That's what I don't know.
But forty-two thousand dollars sitting in an account with your name on it — with no explanation for where it came from — that's not a gift.
That's a problem waiting to be found."
May you like
Thomas turned around.
"I need Marcus's number," he said.
