Chapter 6: What Sarah Found
I went back to the house at eleven that night.
Joel drove.
He parked one street over and waited while I went in alone.
I still had my key.
The lights were off except for the lamp in the front room.
Diane's car was in the driveway.
I let myself in through the side door and stood still in the dark kitchen for a moment, listening.
Diane's bedroom door was closed.
I could hear the faint sound of a television through it.
I started in the home office.
Sarah used it more than I did — her files, her folders, the small cabinet beside the desk where she kept household documents.
I went through it carefully, methodically, using my phone's flashlight.
Nothing unusual.
Bills.
Insurance.
Lily's medical records.
I moved to the bookshelf.
Sarah had a habit of leaving things between books.
Notes, receipts, things she wanted to come back to.
Third shelf from the bottom.
A folded piece of paper tucked between two paperbacks.
I opened it.
It was a photocopy.
Handwritten, not printed.
A letter, dated eleven months ago, addressed to someone named Gerald Marsh.
The handwriting was my mother's.
I read it twice.
Then I sat down on the floor of my own office and read it a third time.
The letter was about me.
About my father's estate.
My father had passed four years ago and left everything — the house, the savings, a life insurance policy — split equally between me and my mother.
I had signed documents at the time.
A lawyer had handled everything.
I had trusted my mother completely.
The letter to Gerald Marsh — whoever he was — described a different arrangement entirely.
It referenced accounts I had never heard of.
Transfers.
A property in another state.
And at the bottom, a line that made my vision blur:
*Ryan has no idea.
He never looks at the accounts.
As long as the girl keeps him busy, he won't.*
The girl.
Sarah.
My mother had been draining my father's estate for nearly four years.
And she had counted on Sarah to keep me distracted.
But Sarah had found the letter.
I stood up.
My legs felt strange.
I folded the photocopy and put it in my jacket pocket.
Then I heard the bedroom door open.
Diane's footsteps in the hallway.
Slow.
Deliberate.
The office door was not fully closed.
I pressed back against the wall behind the desk.
She stopped just outside the door.
"I know you're in here, Ryan."
I didn't move.
"I heard the side door." She pushed the office door open.
The hallway light fell across the desk.
She looked at the open cabinet drawer.
At the shelf where the books had been disturbed.
Her face was very still.
"You found it," she said.
"Yes."
She stepped into the room.
"That letter is not what you think it is."
"It's in your handwriting."
"It was a draft.
It was never sent."
"Gerald Marsh," I said.
"Who is he?"
She hesitated.
One second too long.
"My accountant."
"I'd like his number."
"Ryan—"
"I'd also like the name of the lawyer who handled Dad's estate.
Because I'm going to pull every document from the past four years and I'm going to have someone who is not connected to you look at all of it."
Diane moved to the desk chair and sat down.
She looked, for the first time, genuinely tired.
"You don't understand the position I was in," she said.
"After your father passed, I had nothing.
The estate looked substantial on paper, but there were debts.
There were things he hadn't told me.
I made decisions to protect myself."
"You stole from me."
"I managed assets that were poorly structured."
"You stole from me.
And you counted on Sarah not to notice.
And when she did notice—" My voice tightened.
"Where is she, Mom?"
"I told you.
She left."
"She didn't leave.
She found your letter and she was going to expose you.
And then she disappeared." I stepped closer.
"If something has happened to her—"
"Nothing has happened to her." Diane's voice rose for the first time.
"She is fine.
She is perfectly fine.
I made sure of that."
The room went very quiet.
"What does that mean?" I said.
"You made sure of that."
She pressed her lips together.
"What did you do?"
She looked at the window.
Not at me.
"She needed to be somewhere she couldn't make phone calls for a while," Diane said.
"Somewhere she could think clearly.
Away from you, away from her sister, away from the situation.
It was temporary."
"Where is she?"
"She's safe."
"Where.
Is.
She."
Diane stood up.
"I want you to think very carefully before you do anything rash.
Because if you go to the police with half a story and a photocopied letter, the first thing they are going to ask is why your wife's own family didn't report her missing.
And the answer is going to be complicated.
And complicated takes time.
And in that time—"
"In that time what?"
May you like
She looked at me steadily.
"Certain arrangements become permanent."
