Chapter 7: Everything He Said Out Loud
Gerald suggested we meet at the house — Frank's house, the one I had grown up in, which Gerald had a key to because Frank had trusted him with one years ago and never asked for it back.
I arrived first.
I stood in the kitchen and looked at the apple pancake pan still sitting on the drying rack from the last time Frank had made them for me, three weeks ago, before he was too weak to stand at the stove.
I didn't touch it.
Gerald knocked even though he had a key.
A small performance of courtesy.
"Sweetheart." He opened his arms in the doorway.
I let him hug me.
I kept my hands at my sides.
He stepped back and looked at my face with an expression of deep, practiced sorrow.
"I'm so sorry.
He was a good man.
The best I ever knew."
"He was," I said.
"Come in."
We sat at the kitchen table.
I had made coffee.
Gerald wrapped both hands around his mug the way he always did, and for a moment he looked so familiar, so ordinary, so completely like the uncle I had known for forty years, that something in my chest pulled hard in the wrong direction.
Then I thought about Catherine Reyes.
"I've been going through some of his things," I said.
"He left a lot of papers."
"That sounds like Frank." Gerald smiled.
"He kept everything.
Birthday cards from 1987, I wouldn't be surprised."
"I found some things I didn't expect."
A small shift.
Almost nothing.
The smile stayed but something behind his eyes adjusted.
"Oh?"
"Old photographs, mostly.
Some documents." I kept my voice light.
"Did you know Frank had been married before he met my mother?"
Gerald set his mug down.
"Where did you hear that?"
"I found a birth certificate.
In his papers." I watched his hands.
They were very still on the table.
"Her name was Catherine.
Catherine Reyes."
"Frank mentioned her once or twice over the years." His voice was measured.
"It was a painful chapter for him.
She passed away very young.
He didn't like to talk about it."
"Did you know her well?"
"Briefly.
This was a long time ago, Claire."
"The birth certificate had my name on it." I said it quietly, the way Frank would have said something important.
"Catherine was my biological mother."
Gerald's expression moved through something complicated and landed on sympathy.
"Oh, sweetheart.
That must have been a shock.
Frank should have told you years ago — I always thought so.
But he was protecting you.
That was Frank."
"From what, though?" I asked.
"What was he protecting me from?"
"From grief, I suppose.
From questions that didn't have good answers."
"I found a letter too," I said.
"Frank wrote it recently.
While he was ill."
Gerald picked up his mug again.
A small recalibration of his hands.
"He wrote about Catherine's death," I said.
"He had questions about it.
He'd been looking into it for a long time."
"Frank had a lot of time to think in that hospital." Gerald's voice was gentle, careful.
"Illness does things to the mind, Claire.
It makes people look for reasons, for meaning.
It's not uncommon to—"
"He found a nurse," I said.
"From the night Catherine d*ed.
She wrote a statement."
The mug went back to the table.
This time it stayed there.
"A statement about what?"
"About who was in the corridor that night.
Who went into the room." I looked at him.
"Who was alone with Catherine before she d*ed."
Gerald was quiet for a long moment.
Then something in his face changed.
The sympathy didn't disappear exactly.
It just stopped being the most important thing on his face.
"You need to be very careful," he said, "about what you do with information like that.
A frightened old woman's memory from forty years ago.
A dying man's letter written on painkillers." His voice was still gentle.
Still kind.
"That's not evidence, Claire.
That's grief looking for somewhere to go.
If you take that to anyone official, you will cause enormous pain to this family for nothing.
You will drag Frank's name through something ugly right after his death.
Is that what you want?"
"I want to know what happened to my mother."
"Your mother was Susan." He said it firmly.
"She raised you.
She loved you.
Catherine Reyes was a woman who d*ed in a hospital bed, and it was a tragedy, and Frank never fully recovered from it.
But that doesn't mean—"
"Where were you that night, Gerald?"
The kitchen went very quiet.
His jaw moved once.
"I was there to support Frank.
That's where I was."
"Were you in her room?"
"I may have looked in.
I don't remember every—"
"The nurse remembered."
He stood up.
His chair scraped back and he stood up, and he looked down at me, and for one moment the careful kindness was completely gone and I saw something underneath it that I recognized as the truth.
"Whatever Frank wrote in that letter," he said, "he was a sick old man who spent thirty years turning a tragedy into a conspiracy because he couldn't accept that sometimes people just d*e.
I loved Frank.
I love you.
And I am telling you, as someone who has been part of this family your entire life, that you should put those papers away and let your father rest in peace."
He picked up his coat.
"Don't do this, Claire.
For your own sake."
He walked to the door.
"Gerald."
He stopped but didn't turn.
"Frank knew you were coming back to the hospital that afternoon," I said.
"He sent me away before you arrived.
He wanted me safe."
A long pause.
"Goodbye, Claire." He opened the door.
"Call me when you're thinking clearly."
The door closed behind him.
I reached under the collar of my shirt and pressed the small button Paulson had shown me.
Three seconds later, my phone buzzed.
May you like
Paulson's text: *Got all of it.
Stay where you are.*
