Chapter 6 - The Call From St. Matthew's
Margaret Mercer stood at the end of the hospital corridor holding a red Christmas coat over one arm.
Jason hadn't seen his mother in nearly a year.
Neither had I.
“Mom?”
She looked at him.
Then at me.
“We need to talk.”
Jason's expression hardened.
“Were you working with Grant?”
Margaret stopped.
“Who told you that?”
“That isn't an answer.”
She glanced toward David's room.
“He's alive.”
“Yes,” I said.
She closed her eyes.
“So it's finally over.”
“No,” Jason said. “It isn't.”
We moved into an empty family waiting room.
Margaret sat.
For several moments, nobody spoke.
Then she told us the part no one else knew.
After Daniel died, Grant had approached her.
He knew Daniel had copied company records.
He believed Margaret had them.
She didn't.
But she realized that if Grant believed she did, she could keep him focused on her instead of Jason.
For decades, she maintained occasional contact.
Pretended loyalty.
Fed him harmless information.
Learned what he knew.
“You were spying on him?” Jason asked.
“I was surviving him.”
“And recently?”
“He became suspicious.”
“Why?”
“Because Erica started asking questions.”
Erica looked down.
Margaret continued.
“I told Grant things to make him believe Jason was still loyal.”
“What things?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“That you weren't close to the family.”
My stomach tightened.
“You told him I wouldn't be at Christmas.”
“Yes.”
“Before Dad called me?”
“Yes.”
I turned toward Dad.
He looked devastated.
“So that's why.”
He nodded.
“Grant wanted assurance you wouldn't be there.”
“And you gave it to him.”
“I thought one cruel phone call was safer than putting you in the same room with him.”
I wanted to remain angry.
Part of me was.
But another part remembered the overturned bus.
Sometimes decisions were made in seconds.
Sometimes every option was bad.
That didn't erase the wound.
It explained it.
Jason looked at his mother.
“What does Grant want now?”
“The ledger.”
“What ledger?”
David answered from the doorway.
We all turned.
He stood supported by a nurse.
“The original.”
The ledger contained handwritten records from Northstar's earliest years.
Payments.
Names.
Inspection numbers.
Everything digital files could be accused of fabricating.
“Where is it?” I asked.
David looked at Dad.
Dad shook his head.
“I don't know.”
“Yes, you do,” Margaret said.
Dad frowned.
“Daniel gave it to you.”
“He gave me an envelope.”
“What happened to it?”
“I gave it to Evelyn.”
Mom.
I remembered her letter.
The truth has finally become safer than the lie.
“Her things,” I said.
Dad looked at me.
“What?”
“Where are Mom's things?”
“The attic.”
We returned to the house with police still processing the upstairs room.
Boxes filled the attic.
Christmas decorations.
Photographs.
Mom's clothes.
I found a wooden chest with her initials.
Inside were letters.
My childhood drawings.
My first Army photograph.
At the bottom lay a Bible.
Mom wasn't religious.
That made it stand out.
I opened it.
The center had been hollowed carefully.
Inside was a black ledger.
Dad sat down on an old trunk.
“My God.”
I opened it.
Daniel's handwriting.
David's notes.
Mom's annotations.
Enough history to explain twenty-five years of fear.
Then something fell from the pages.
A key.
Small.
Silver.
Attached tag:
Mile marker 214.
The location of the accident.
Coincidence again.
Except I no longer believed in those.
David examined it.
“I've never seen this.”
Jason turned it over.
“Storage key.”
“How do you know?”
“Northstar uses these.”
“Where?”
He stared at the number.
“Old maintenance depot.”
We drove there with law enforcement.
Locker 214 stood in a row of rusting metal cabinets.
The key fit.
Inside were inspection reports.
Originals.
Including the bus involved in the Christmas Eve accident.
Stamped:
REMOVE FROM SERVICE.
Signed by an inspector.
Then overwritten digitally later.
Erica photographed everything.
Jason stared at the pages.
“This could have killed forty people.”
“But it didn't,” I said.
“Because you were there.”
I looked at him.
“No. Because dozens of people were there. Soldiers. Troopers. Firefighters. Medics.”
He nodded.
For once, neither of us was competing.
Maybe we never had been.
Maybe other people had built that competition around us.
Police collected the documents.
Federal investigators were notified.
Grant Holloway's world was beginning to collapse.
But when we returned to Dad's house, Natalie was waiting.
Her expression told me something had changed.
“Grant's gone.”
“What?”
“His attorney says he left town before dawn.”
“Can they stop him?”
“Authorities are trying.”
Then she handed me an envelope.
“This was delivered to the station.”
My name was written on it.
Inside was one photograph.
Me at age twelve.
Leaving school.
On the back:
Your mother made the right choice.
Dad went white.
I turned the photograph over again.
Below the sentence was a second line.
Fresh ink.
You should make the same one.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
No voice.
Only breathing.
Then a man whispered:
“Major Bennett?”
I said nothing.
He continued.
“You found the ledger.”
My eyes moved to Dad.
Then Jason.
Then Erica.
The caller laughed quietly.
“But you haven't found what your mother hid inside it.”
The line disconnected.
I opened the ledger.
Near the back, two pages were glued together.
I carefully separated them.
A photograph slid onto the table.
May you like
And when Dad saw it, he whispered one name.
“Thomas.”
