Chapter 13 - The Phone Call After Dark
That night my mother called from the house where I'd grown up.
"Evelyn, there are police downstairs."
I sat upright in my hotel bed. "Are you hurt?"
"No. I called because your father started pulling apart the office. He's throwing papers into bags and saying the files belong to him. I told him to stop."
A door slammed behind her. I heard a man's voice, then an officer asking everyone to stay in separate rooms.
"Mom, leave the office alone. Tell the officers what you saw."
"I found an envelope."
"Don't open anything else."
"Your name is on it."
I closed my eyes. I could picture that office: the old desk, the cabinet with the warped left door, Dad's habit of treating the room like an extension of himself.
"Whose handwriting?"
"It looks like Lewis's."
The air seemed to leave the hotel.
Lewis Mercer had been my closest friend on our Navy explosive ordnance disposal team. He'd pulled me away from the burning wreckage after the IED that shattered my knee. He died six years ago. I'd spent a long time carrying the things I never got to tell him.
"Where was it?" I asked.
"Behind the cabinet. Taped to the back. I moved the cabinet when Robert knocked it sideways."
An officer came on the line, with Mom's permission. He explained that he was keeping the peace while the household dispute was assessed, not conducting a search of every drawer. Mom could give him the envelope if she believed it might be relevant. He suggested she contact her lawyer and avoid confronting Dad again.
Mom asked to read the letter herself. I told her to photograph the outside first and preserve the envelope. Then she broke the old seal.
"Evelyn," she began, and stopped. She had to try twice. "If this reaches you after I'm gone, there is something you need to know about your father."
May you like
I put my feet on the carpet. My right knee held. The left one still needed a moment every morning before it remembered how.
"Keep reading," I said.
