Chapter 5: The Sister Who Never Died
I sat with that for a moment.
"My mother has a sister."
"Had," Clara said.
"Margaret Voss d*ed four years ago.
But for the fourteen years before that, your father was sending her money.
Regular transfers.
Every quarter."
"Why?"
Clara turned from the window.
"Because she knew something about how your father built the company.
Something from the very beginning, before you were born, before your mother knew what she had married into.
Margaret found out and she went to your father privately.
They made an arrangement.
She stayed quiet.
He paid."
"Blackmail," I said.
"She called it an understanding."
Lily leaned forward.
"That's what I found in his study.
The transfer records.
I didn't know who Margaret Voss was — I just saw the name and the amounts and I knew it was wrong.
Forty thousand dollars every three months for over a decade.
I wrote down the account numbers and I went to William because I thought—" She stopped.
"I thought you would know what to do.
You were twenty-one.
You seemed so sure of everything back then."
"I wasn't sure of anything," I said.
"You seemed like you were."
I looked at the cassette player.
"So Lily found the transfers.
She came to me.
Before I could do anything, he made a call to Harlan.
And then—"
"And then you fell," Clara said.
"Or were pushed.
I was never told which."
The word landed in the room and stayed there.
"Clara."
"I don't know, William.
I genuinely don't know.
He told me you fell.
The hospital report said you fell.
But I have spent eighteen years wondering."
I thought about the stone path.
The way my memory of that night simply ended — not faded, not blurred, but ended, like a film cut to black.
I had always assumed that was what head injuries did.
Now I was less certain.
"It doesn't matter right now," Lily said.
Her voice was careful.
Deliberate.
"What matters is the tape.
What matters is Harlan.
Because your father is old and frightened and he just walked out of here, and the first call he makes will be to Harlan."
"You think Harlan will come here."
"I think Harlan has been managing this secret for eighteen years and he has a great deal more to lose than your father does." She looked at me directly.
"Your father is a man who made bad choices.
Harlan is a man who built a business on them."
I stood up carefully, moving Eva without waking her, and laid her across the sofa cushions with her head on the armrest.
She sighed and pulled her knees up.
I looked at my daughter's face for a moment.
Seven years old.
Feeding bread through a drain to a woman she didn't know, because nobody else would.
"I need to make a call," I said.
"To who?" Clara asked.
"A lawyer.
Someone outside this town." I looked at Lily.
"And I need you to tell me everything you remember about those account numbers.
Every digit you can recall."
"I remember all of them," she said.
"I memorized them the night I found them.
I've had eighteen years to make sure I didn't forget."
I picked up my phone.
Clara moved toward me and put her hand on my arm — not stopping me, just resting it there.
"William," she said.
"I know I have no right to ask you for anything.
But before you make that call — I need to tell you something I should have told you years ago.
Something that isn't about your father or Harlan or the tape."
Her hand was shaking slightly against my sleeve.
May you like
"It's about the night you fell," she said.
"And what I saw from the upstairs window."
