Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
“Don't show her that accident report, Nolan. Not until she knows who signed it.”
Blake's voice came from behind me.
I turned so quickly that the photograph slipped from my fingers.
My husband stood in the hallway, his face pale beneath the warm light. For the first time in three years, he wasn't laughing at me.
He was frightened.
And somehow, that frightened me more.
“What accident report?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
Andrew Mercer closed the legal folder halfway.
Nolan looked at Blake with an expression I had never seen on my brother's face.
“You knew about the report?”
Blake swallowed.
“I know enough to understand you're making a mistake.”
“Then explain it,” Nolan said.
Diane moved forward, clutching the collar of her robe.
“It's after midnight. Whatever this nonsense is, it can wait until morning.”
“No,” I said.
My own voice surprised me.
Everyone looked at me.
I bent down and picked up the photograph.
The woman standing beside Blake was Rebecca Sloan.
My mother's closest friend.
The woman who brought casseroles after the funeral.
The woman who sat beside me at the cemetery and told me my parents would want me to be happy.
She had worked with my father at a Texas engineering company called Westbridge Engineering.
When my parents died, Rebecca helped sort through Dad's office.
She was also the person who encouraged me to start dating again.
And now I was holding a photograph of her standing beside my husband months before we supposedly met.
“Rebecca?” I whispered.
Blake looked away.
Nolan finally spoke.
“She introduced him into your life, Audrey.”
I shook my head.
“No. We met at a coffee shop.”
“Rebecca told Blake which coffee shop you went to every Thursday.”
My stomach twisted.
I remembered that afternoon.
The rain.
My dropped purse.
The handsome stranger who helped me gather my belongings.
Blake had laughed about how clumsy he was when his coffee spilled.
I'd thought it was a sweet accident.
“He knew where you'd be,” Nolan continued. “He knew your favorite drink. He knew you were grieving.”
“Stop,” Blake muttered.
But Nolan didn't.
“He knew everything Rebecca told him.”
I looked at my husband.
“Was any of it real?”
Blake opened his mouth.
For one desperate second, I wanted him to say yes.
I wanted him to tell me that something in our marriage had been genuine.
Instead, he said, “It wasn't supposed to go this far.”
The words knocked the breath out of me.
Kendra crossed her arms.
“Seriously, Blake? You're letting these people come into our house and interrogate you?”
“Our house?” Nolan repeated.
I held up my hand.
“Let him talk.”
Blake stared at me.
Then he looked at Andrew.
“Anything I say can be used against me, right?”
Andrew's expression remained neutral.
“You should consult your own attorney.”
Blake gave a bitter laugh.
“Of course.”
He walked toward the living room.
“I'm not doing this.”
Nolan stepped aside rather than block him.
That surprised me.
My brother wasn't here to start a fight.
He had come prepared to finish one.
Andrew pulled out a chair at the dining table.
“Audrey, there's something we need to explain.”
I sat down slowly.
The anniversary plates were still there.
My mother's good china.
The half-empty wineglasses.
The remains of the dinner I had spent three hours preparing for people who hated me.
Andrew placed two documents beside my plate.
The first was a copy of the deed transferring my parents' house into Blake's name.
I'd seen it before.
The second was a bank notice.
I read the first paragraph.
Then I read it again.
“What's this?”
“Your husband obtained financing against the property eighteen months ago,” Andrew explained. “The lender has issued a notice of default.”
My chest tightened.
“How much?”
Andrew hesitated.
“Approximately two hundred and eighty thousand dollars, including the current claimed balance and fees.”
I stared at him.
“That's impossible.”
Blake had told me his business needed only temporary financing.
He had promised he wouldn't put the house at risk.
I looked toward the living room.
“BLAKE!”
He didn't answer.
“Where is the money?”
He appeared in the doorway.
“What money?”
“The money you borrowed against my parents' house!”
His eyes moved toward the paperwork.
Then his expression changed.
“That's business financing.”
“What business?”
He said nothing.
“YOU DON'T HAVE A BUSINESS!”
Diane stood.
“Lower your voice, young lady.”
I turned toward her.
For three years, that woman had told me to be quiet.
To stop complaining.
To watch my tone.
Something inside me finally broke.
“No, Diane. You lower yours.”
Her mouth fell open.
I stood.
“You've been living in my parents' house, eating my food, calling me names, and treating me like hired help. You don't get to tell me how to speak anymore.”
Kendra laughed nervously.
“Oh, now she's brave because her brother showed up.”
Nolan looked at her.
“Kendra, I'd be very careful about what you say next.”
She stopped laughing.
Andrew slid the final document toward me.
It was a photocopy of a report bearing the seal of the Texas Department of Transportation.
A commercial vehicle collision.
Five years earlier.
The night my parents died.
I recognized the highway number.
I recognized the date.
I recognized my father's name.
But one sentence had been highlighted.
Mechanical defect reported by witness prior to collision.
I looked up.
“What does this mean?”
Nolan pulled out another photograph.
It showed a commercial truck with severe damage to its front end.
“Your parents were struck by a delivery truck,” he said. “The original investigation focused on driver error.”
“I know.”
“The truck belonged to a transportation contractor that serviced Westbridge Engineering.”
I looked down at the photograph.
Something about the logo seemed familiar.
Nolan continued.
“Three weeks before the accident, Dad reported concerns about that contractor's maintenance records.”
My fingers tightened around the paper.
“Dad never told me.”
“He wasn't sure what he'd found yet.”
Andrew leaned forward.
“Rebecca Sloan was responsible for forwarding those concerns to the company's risk committee.”
I looked at the woman in the photograph.
Rebecca had been my father's trusted colleague.
She'd cried at his funeral.
She had helped carry my mother's flowers.
“Did she know the truck was dangerous?”
“We know she received a report identifying a serious maintenance problem,” Andrew said carefully. “We don't yet know what she did with that information.”
“Then why would she want my house?”
Nolan exchanged a glance with Andrew.
“Because Dad kept copies of his work at home.”
I felt cold.
“My father's office?”
“Yes.”
I thought about Blake moving into the house.
How he'd insisted we clear out Dad's old filing cabinets.
How he'd boxed up engineering drawings and told me they were worthless.
How Rebecca had visited one afternoon to help us organize the room.
I remembered her asking whether Dad had kept a little brown notebook.
At the time, I thought she was being sentimental.
Now I wasn't so sure.
“What notebook?” I asked.
Nolan went still.
I told him what Rebecca had said.
He immediately opened his folder again.
“Dad used a brown field notebook for his inspections,” he explained. “We haven't been able to locate the last one.”
Blake moved toward the hallway.
Nolan noticed.
“Where are you going?”
“Getting some air.”
“Then leave your phone on the table.”
Blake glared at him.
“You don't give me orders.”
“No,” Nolan replied. “But Audrey can decide whether you stay in her presence.”
I stood.
“Get out of my sight, Blake.”
He stared at me.
Then, without another word, he disappeared into the guest bedroom.
Andrew didn't pretend everything was solved.
He explained that the deed challenge would require a court proceeding, and the default made the situation urgent.
He had prepared evidence for an emergency request to stop any immediate transfer or foreclosure action while the fraud allegations were reviewed.
“But we need more,” he said.
I looked around my parents' dining room.
For years, I'd believed I had nothing left to offer.
No evidence.
No power.
No one willing to stand beside me.
Then I remembered something.
“The notebook,” I whispered.
Nolan leaned forward.
“What?”
“Dad had a hiding place.”
When I was little, my father used to keep emergency cash inside the old upright piano.
Mom complained that it was ridiculous.
Dad called it his safest bank.
I looked toward the living room.
The piano was still against the far wall.
Blake had wanted to sell it.
I'd refused.
I walked across the room and lifted the narrow wooden panel beneath the keyboard.
My hands shook.
Inside was a dusty envelope.
And beneath it—
A small brown notebook.
Nolan came up beside me.
“Oh, Dad,” he whispered.
I opened the cover.
My father's familiar handwriting filled the first page.
But it wasn't the engineering calculations that made me stop breathing.
It was the sentence written across the inside cover.
If anything happens to me, do not trust Rebecca Sloan.
And beneath that, in darker ink:
Audrey must never sign away the house. It's the only place I know the evidence can be kept safe.
I stared at those words.
Then Nolan turned to the final page.
Someone had torn it out.
And in its place was a photograph of my parents standing beside Rebecca Sloan.
May you like
On the back, in my father's handwriting, were six words.
“Ask Rebecca what happened that Friday.”
