Chapter 17
The memory came in pieces.
Rain on the windows.
Mom’s wet hair.
Dad reaching for her.
A loud crack.
Mom falling.
I had spent five years believing it was a nightmare.
I stared at Dad across the hospital room.
He noticed.
“What is it?”
“Did Mom come home that night?”
His face went blank.
Mom turned toward him.
“What?”
Dad sat down.
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t an answer,” I said.
He pressed both hands against his head.
“I woke on the couch. Melissa said Sarah was dead.”
“You hit her.”
Mom whispered my name.
“I saw him.”
Dad looked terrified.
“I would never hurt Sarah.”
“Emma doesn’t invent memories,” Mom said.
“You think I did this?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
The fragile peace between them shattered.
Rebecca separated us.
She reminded me Dad had been drugged.
A confused memory might not show the complete event.
But I needed the truth.
Against Dad’s wishes, I agreed to meet Grant Hale.
The interview took place behind reinforced glass at a Louisiana detention center.
Ruiz sat beside me.
Hale looked exhausted.
He placed the ledger on the table.
“My brother and Mercer destroyed many lives,” he said. “I’m done protecting them.”
“You kidnapped my mother.”
“Mercer ordered me to bring her to the station. I didn’t know he would take her.”
“You attacked us at the park.”
“I needed the box.”
He confessed easily now that the conspiracy was collapsing.
But when I asked about Dad, he leaned closer.
“Daniel struck Sarah after she returned home.”
“Why?”
“Because he believed she was Melissa.”
That answer made no sense.
Hale explained.
Dad’s coffee contained a powerful sedative.
When Mom crawled back to the house after escaping the crash, she wore Melissa’s red coat.
Melissa had left it inside Mom’s car to connect herself to the scene.
Dad woke confused and saw a figure entering with a weapon.
He swung a fireplace tool.
The person fell.
“What happened next?”
“Melissa and my brother arrived.”
“Was Mom alive?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t Dad remember?”
“Andrew injected him again.”
Hale said Melissa took Mom to the clinic.
Mercer planned to kill her there.
Dr. Hale refused.
He convinced Mercer that keeping Mom alive and confused was safer because her body could expose the false crash evidence.
“Dad didn’t push her off the bridge?”
“No. But he struck her in the house.”
I felt both relief and horror.
Hale opened the ledger.
A final payment appeared beside Dad’s name.
Two hundred thousand dollars had been deposited into an account six weeks after Mom vanished.
“Melissa used it to convince Mercer that Daniel was involved,” Hale said.
“Did Dad know about the account?”
“No.”
Hale turned to the last page.
One name appeared above all the others.
Not Thomas.
Not Melissa.
Not Mercer.
Evelyn Carter.
My grandmother.
Dad’s mother.
She lived in Arizona and had not spoken to us since Mom died.
According to the ledger, she had financed Project Bluebird.
“Why would Grandma hurt Mom?” I asked.
May you like
Hale looked through the glass at Dad waiting in the hallway.
“Because Sarah discovered Daniel wasn’t Evelyn’s biological son.”
