Chapter 1 - He Still Thinks She’s Alive
The paramedics were still trying to stabilize Frank when Kevin made his first mistake.
“He shouldn't have been digging into the money!”
Nobody spoke.
Until then, we had believed my seventy-two-year-old father-in-law had simply been unlucky.
A wild boar had charged him near the edge of the family property outside Asheville, North Carolina. Frank had been knocked down hard, his face swollen, one arm bleeding, and because he took blood thinners after a stroke, every minute mattered.
I had been kneeling beside him when the ambulance arrived.
My wife Rachel had gone to meet the responders at the gate.
Helen, my mother-in-law, stood several feet away trembling.
And Kevin—
Kevin kept talking.
“What money?” I asked.
His jaw tightened.
“Family stuff.”
Frank opened his eyes.
“He knows.”
Kevin stepped toward him.
“He doesn't know what he's saying.”
“Back up.”
Kevin ignored me.
Then Frank's weak hand pointed toward him.
Kevin lunged forward.
I intercepted him and shoved him away from the stretcher.
He grabbed my shirt.
For several seconds we struggled while paramedics shielded Frank.
“Enough!” Helen screamed.
That was when she noticed the phone.
Frank's phone lay half-hidden beneath flattened grass.
Helen snatched it up.
Kevin saw it.
His expression changed instantly.
“Give me that.”
Helen backed away.
Kevin broke free from me.
“Mom, give it to me!”
She held the phone against her chest.
“Delete it!”
And Helen screamed:
“Frank already sent it!”
Silence.
Even Kevin stopped moving.
I looked at Helen.
“Sent what?”
Her face went white.
Frank's voice came weakly from the ground.
“Ask her…”
He coughed.
A paramedic told him not to speak.
Frank ignored him.
“Ask her where your wife's inheritance went.”
For several seconds, I couldn't understand the sentence.
Rachel's inheritance?
My wife was alive.
She was literally running toward us from the driveway.
Then Kevin whispered:
“Mom…”
He looked at Helen.
Not at me.
“Dad still thinks she’s alive.”
I turned slowly.
“Who?”
Nobody answered.
Rachel reached us.
“What happened?”
I stared at her.
“Your father says someone stole your inheritance.”
Rachel frowned.
“I don't have an inheritance.”
Kevin looked terrified.
Then Frank grabbed my wrist.
His grip was astonishingly strong.
“Not Rachel.”
My stomach tightened.
Frank whispered one name.
“Emily.”
Rachel stopped breathing.
I knew that name.
Emily Parker.
Rachel's older sister.
Dead for twenty-three years.
A nineteen-year-old girl whose car supposedly went off a mountain road during a storm.
No body had ever been recovered.
Only the car.
Rachel looked at her father.
“Dad…”
Frank's eyes closed.
Before the paramedics loaded him onto the stretcher, he whispered:
“She called me.”
Helen made a broken sound.
Rachel stared.
“When?”
Frank opened his eyes one final time.
“Yesterday.”
Then Kevin bolted toward the woods.
I caught him before he made ten feet.
“What did Frank send?”
Kevin struggled.
“Get off me!”
“What did he send?”
Helen suddenly said:
“A bank statement.”
Kevin stopped.
Rachel looked at her mother.
“What bank statement?”
May you like
Helen began crying.
“The account we told everyone died with Emily.”
