Chapter 3 - THE OTHER HALF
“No.”
Emily’s answer came before I even reached the diner’s back door.
“You’re not going to Lucas.”
I turned.
“He has the other half.”
“That doesn’t mean he sent mine to Theo.”
“Mine.”
She blinked.
“The pendant was mine.”
Emily looked down at the silver half in Theo’s hand.
Daniel closed the storage-room door again.
“Ethan, think.”
“I have been thinking for six years.”
“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t confront anyone angry.”
He was right.
I hated that.
So I did something the younger version of me never would have done.
I waited.
An hour later, Daniel drove us to the small house Emily had rented outside Grayhaven under the name Emily Carter.
I sat in the back beside Theo.
He studied me openly.
“Are you really my dad?”
Emily turned from the front seat.
“Theo—”
“It’s okay.”
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
He considered that.
“Where were you?”
Four words.
No accusation.
Somehow that hurt more.
“I didn’t know where you were.”
“Did you look?”
“Every day.”
Theo nodded as if filing the answer away.
Then he asked, “Do you like dinosaurs?”
Daniel coughed into his fist.
I almost laughed.
“I’m willing to learn.”
“Good.”
That was apparently enough for now.
At Emily’s house, Daniel spread six years of carefully preserved evidence across her kitchen table.
Photographs.
Receipts.
Old train tickets.
Copies of the original threat.
And a yellowed newspaper clipping about my father, Richard Brooks.
Theo sat in the living room drawing.
I picked up the clipping.
My father stood beside Lucas and me at the opening of the Brooks Children’s Foundation.
I was twenty-seven.
Lucas was twenty-three.
“You think Lucas did this because of the company?” I asked.
Daniel shook his head.
“Too simple.”
Emily placed my father’s watch beside the compass.
“The objects mean something.”
She was right.
The watch.
The pendant.
Family objects.
Not random threats.
Someone wanted us looking backward.
I studied the photograph.
Then I noticed something.
My father wore the Omega watch.
Beside him stood Margaret Sloan.
My assistant now.
My father’s assistant then.
“She worked for him?”
Emily looked surprised.
“You didn’t know?”
“I knew Margaret joined the company before I took over. I didn’t know she worked directly for my father.”
Daniel nodded.
“For eighteen months.”
“Why did she leave his office?”
“She didn’t.”
Daniel slid another photograph toward me.
It showed my father outside a hotel.
Margaret stood beside him.
Not professionally.
His hand rested against the small of her back.
I stared at it.
“No.”
“I found that three years after Emily disappeared.”
“You’re telling me my father had an affair with Margaret?”
“I’m telling you they were close.”
Emily quietly said, “Look at the date.”
Eight months before Lucas was born.
I looked at her.
“No.”
“I’m not saying anything,” she replied. “I’m asking you to notice.”
The front door opened.
Every muscle in my body tightened.
Then Rosie entered carrying grocery bags.
“You people need to stop looking like somebody’s about to shoot the toaster.”
Theo ran toward her.
Rosie had owned the diner for thirty years. Emily told me Rosie had given her work without asking questions.
Rosie set the groceries down.
Then she saw my father’s photograph.
Her expression changed.
“You knew him?” I asked.
Rosie looked at Emily.
Apparently there were still secrets.
“I knew Richard Brooks.”
“How?”
“He ate at my first diner.”
Rosie sat slowly.
“He came every Thursday for almost two years.”
“With Margaret?”
“No.”
She pointed at someone barely visible in the background of the photograph.
A young woman.
My mother.
“Evelyn.”
My confusion deepened.
Rosie explained that my parents’ marriage had been collapsing long before anyone knew. My father had affairs. My mother knew.
“But she stayed,” Rosie said. “For you boys.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“Parents are very good at hiding the things they think will hurt their children.”
Emily looked away.
The sentence landed between us.
Rosie reached for the compass.
“I’ve seen this.”
“Where?”
“Last Tuesday.”
My chair scraped backward.
“The woman who visited Theo had one.”
Theo looked over from the living room.
“She had the other shiny piece.”
My heart stopped.
“Not Lucas?”
Rosie shook her head.
“She wore it around her neck.”
Emily whispered, “Who was she?”
Rosie looked at me.
“She said her name was Evelyn.”
My mother.
The room fell silent.
I stood.
This time Emily didn’t stop me.
Three hours later, we were outside my mother’s estate.
I went inside alone.
Evelyn Brooks was seventy-one and still carried herself like every room belonged to her.
She sat near the fireplace.
“I wondered how long it would take.”
I placed the compass half on the table.
“You visited my son.”
Her eyes softened.
“So you found him.”
“You knew?”
“For five years.”
My anger became something almost impossible to contain.
“You knew I had a child?”
“Yes.”
“And said nothing?”
“I was asked not to.”
“By Emily?”
“No.”
That answer changed the room.
“Then who?”
My mother rose.
She crossed to an old cabinet and removed a cedar box.
Inside was Lucas’s half of the compass.
I stared at it.
“He gave it to me six years ago,” she said.
“Then what was around your neck?”
“Yours.”
She opened her blouse slightly.
There it was.
My half.
“The one Theo gave me was fake?”
“A copy.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
“Because I needed you to come here without warning Lucas.”
My pulse changed.
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs.”
I started toward the staircase.
My mother caught my sleeve.
“Ethan.”
Something in her face stopped me.
“Lucas didn’t threaten Emily.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he received a threat too.”
She opened the cedar box again.
Beneath the compass lay a child’s hospital bracelet.
The name printed on it was faded but readable.
BABY BOY SLOAN.
Date of birth:
The same day Lucas was born.
I looked at my mother.
She was crying now.
“Lucas isn’t your father’s son,” she whispered.
Then footsteps sounded above us.
Lucas appeared at the top of the staircase.
He looked at the bracelet in my hand.
And said quietly:
May you like
“Neither are you.”
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