Chapter 3: Don't Do Anything Stupid
I stared at Dean's text for a long time.
Sophie was watching me from across the kitchen table.
Her eyes were red.
She hadn't said a word since the video ended.
"Mom." Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know yet." I set the phone face-down on the table.
"But I'm not calling him."
"He knows we found it." She pressed her hands flat on the table.
"How does he already know?"
That was the question that had been sitting in my chest since the message came through.
We hadn't told anyone.
Sophie had come straight to me.
The phone had been buried in a box in a back bedroom for six years.
How did Dean know?
I picked up Daniel's old phone again and watched the video a second time.
I needed to hear his voice again.
I needed to be sure I hadn't imagined it.
I hadn't.
Daniel's face on that screen was calm in the way that frightened me more than panic would have.
He wasn't guessing.
He wasn't worried.
He was certain enough about what might happen that he had sat down in our garage the night before a fishing trip and recorded a confession for a crime that hadn't been committed yet.
Or that he believed was coming.
"He said Dean owed money to people who don't forgive debts," Sophie said.
"What does that mean?
What kind of people?"
"I don't know."
"Dad knew something was going to happen.
He recorded that video because he was scared." She looked at me.
"And then they never came home."
I stood up and walked to the window.
The backyard was dark.
The old oak tree Daniel had planted the year our oldest son was born was just a shadow against the fence.
"Mom, we have to go to the police."
"We will." I turned around.
"But not tonight.
Tonight I need to think."
"Think about what?
We have a video.
Dad recorded—"
"Sophie." I said it quietly, but she stopped.
"Dean has been inside this house for six years.
He knows our routines.
He knows which nights I work late.
He knows when you girls are home alone." I paused.
"Before we do anything, I need to understand exactly what we're dealing with."
She went still.
My phone buzzed again.
Same number.
No message this time.
Just a missed call.
I let it ring out.
Then I went to the drawer beside the refrigerator where Daniel used to keep important papers and pulled out the folder at the back.
Property records.
The lake property.
I had never paid much attention to it.
Daniel had inherited it from his father.
It had always just been there.
I spread the documents on the table.
Sophie leaned over my shoulder.
"What are you looking for?"
"I want to know what this land is worth." I found the county assessment from three years ago.
The number at the bottom made me sit down slowly.
Four hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
Sophie read it over my shoulder.
Neither of us spoke.
Dean hadn't asked Daniel to sign over a piece of land.
He had asked him to hand over nearly half a million dollars.
And when Daniel said no, four people never came home from a fishing trip.
My phone lit up again.
This time it was a text.
"I'm not the enemy here, Carol.
There are things you don't understand.
Things Daniel never told you.
Call me.
Please."
I showed Sophie the screen.
She read it twice.
Then she looked up at me with something in her eyes that was no longer grief.
"He's scared," she said.
May you like
She was right.
And that told me everything I needed to know about what he had done.
