Chapter 3 - WHAT NATHAN SAID BEFORE MORNING
For eight years, Ava had believed Nathan died alone in the snow.
That belief had nearly destroyed her.
Now she knew it had been a lie.
“Survived until morning.”
She read the sentence again.
The words refused to change.
Daniel stood beside her in the bedroom, staring at Emily’s handwriting as though his late wife had reached through time and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Lily had grown quiet.
Children noticed when adults became frightened even when they did not understand why.
Daniel crouched beside her.
“Hey, bug. Why don’t you pick a book for bedtime?”
“I’m not tired.”
“I know.”
“Are you sad?”
“A little.”
Lily looked toward Ava.
“Is she sad too?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Yes.”
Lily studied Ava solemnly.
Then she walked over and offered her a purple crayon.
Ava stared at it.
“It’s my best one,” Lily said.
Something inside Ava nearly collapsed.
She accepted it carefully.
“Thank you.”
Lily nodded and returned to the bed.
Daniel exhaled.
“Emily kept journals.”
Ava looked at him.
“She did?”
“Not diaries exactly. She wrote things down after difficult shifts. She said if she carried every patient home in her head, she’d never sleep.”
“Where are they?”
“That I know.”
He led Ava to a small bookcase downstairs.
There were five black notebooks behind a row of woodworking magazines.
Daniel found the one labeled 2018.
His hand stopped before opening it.
“This feels wrong.”
Ava knew what he meant.
Emily had not written those pages for strangers.
Ava certainly had no right to them.
But somewhere inside that notebook might be the final hours of her husband’s life.
“I only need November seventeenth and eighteenth.”
Daniel nodded.
He turned pages carefully.
Then stopped.
The handwriting was tight and uneven.
Daniel read silently first.
His jaw hardened.
“What?”
He handed Ava the notebook.
Emily had written about an unidentified male brought into the clinic shortly before midnight by a highway crew after his SUV went over an embankment.
He had severe internal injuries.
His wallet had been lost somewhere near the wreck.
His phone was destroyed.
But he was conscious.
He knew his name.
Nathan Hawthorne.
Ava pressed her fist against her mouth.
The entry continued.
He kept asking for his wife.
Ava.
He became frightened whenever anyone mentioned calling his family office.
At 2:10 a.m., he asked Emily for paper.
At 3:40, he made her promise to deliver something personally.
At 5:16, his blood pressure collapsed.
At 5:42, Nathan Hawthorne died.
Ava stared at the final line until the ink blurred.
Daniel sat across from her.
“I’m sorry.”
“They told me he was dead before the ambulance reached him.”
“I know.”
“They told me there was nothing anyone could have done.”
Daniel did not try to soften it.
Instead he said, “Maybe there wasn’t.”
Ava looked up.
“That doesn’t excuse the lie.”
“No.”
Her anger rose so quickly it frightened her.
Someone had stolen five hours from her.
Five hours in which Nathan had spoken.
Thought.
Asked for her.
Maybe cried.
Maybe been afraid.
And someone had decided she did not deserve to know.
“What did he give Emily?”
Daniel returned to the journal.
The next paragraph answered part of it.
A sealed envelope.
The compass.
And instructions.
If Ava could not be reached directly, Emily was to go to the Hawthorne offices and ask for Graham Hawthorne.
Ava’s stomach twisted.
Graham.
Nathan’s father.
The man who had held Ava at the funeral.
The man who had brought groceries to her house when she stopped eating.
The man who had sat beside her during every terrible meeting in the first year after Nathan died.
The man Ava still called Dad.
Daniel continued reading.
“Emily wrote that she drove to Denver two days later.”
Ava’s voice barely worked.
“And?”
“She met Graham.”
The next page was shorter.
Emily had been escorted into Graham Hawthorne’s private office.
She gave him Nathan’s sealed envelope.
She told him Nathan’s final message was meant for Ava.
Graham promised he would deliver it personally.
Then Emily showed him the compass.
According to the journal, Graham stared at it for a long time.
He told her Ava could not see it.
Not yet.
She was “barely functioning.”
Emily refused to give it to him.
That explained why she still had it.
But something else had happened.
Daniel turned the page.
The next entry had been torn out.
Not carefully.
Ripped near the binding.
Ava stared at the jagged paper.
“Did Emily do that?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel checked the surrounding entries.
November twentieth.
Then November twenty-third.
Whatever Emily wrote between them was gone.
Lily appeared beside the sofa holding a stuffed rabbit.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“Mommy put paper in the old chair.”
Daniel looked at her blankly.
“What old chair?”
“The ugly one.”
Ava almost smiled despite everything.
Daniel did not.
“What do you mean, put paper in it?”
Lily climbed beside him.
“When Mommy was sick, she said not to throw it away.”
Daniel’s eyes shifted toward the garage.
He restored furniture for a living.
His home was full of unfinished pieces.
“The green chair?” he asked.
Lily nodded.
“It scratches.”
Daniel moved.
Fast.
The garage smelled of cedar dust and varnish.
Against the back wall sat an ugly green armchair with one side partially stripped to its wooden frame.
Daniel pulled it away from the wall.
“My wife hated waste,” he said. “I thought she wanted me to restore it someday.”
He ran his fingers beneath the seat.
Nothing.
Then Ava noticed one upholstery tack looked newer than the others.
“Daniel.”
He saw it too.
Using a small flat tool from his bench, he lifted the tack.
A section of fabric loosened.
Something crackled behind it.
Daniel reached inside.
He withdrew a folded sheet of paper wrapped in waxed cloth.
His face went pale.
It was the missing journal page.
Emily had hidden it.
Daniel unfolded it.
The first lines described returning to the Hawthorne building three days after Nathan died because she no longer trusted Graham.
She had seen something on his desk during their meeting.
A photograph.
Nathan standing beside a warehouse.
And a handwritten note from Nathan:
THE CHILDREN’S MONEY IS BEING MOVED THROUGH HERE.
Emily wrote that when she confronted Graham, he had not threatened her.
He had begged her.
He said thousands of employees could lose everything.
He said Nathan did not understand how close the company was to collapse.
And then Emily wrote one final sentence.
Daniel read it twice.
Ava took the page from him.
May you like
At the bottom, Emily had written:
Graham says Ava signed the transfers herself.
