Chapter 8 - The Dead Grandfather
Richard Sloan supposedly died in 2004.
Stroke.
Closed casket because he had donated his body for medical research afterward—or so Dad had been told.
That contradiction should have bothered everyone.
Apparently grief makes paperwork easier to accept.
Evelyn admitted the truth.
Richard didn't die in 2004.
He disappeared.
His death certificate was part of the relocation network.
“Why?”
Because Richard discovered who was leaking protected family locations.
He believed confronting the person openly would endanger Sarah and Claire.
So he entered the very system he helped create.
Dad stared at his mother.
“You let me think Dad was dead for twenty-two years.”
“Yes.”
“Is he alive?”
“I don't know.”
Sarah's surveillance photograph was six months old.
The man looked seventy-eight.
Richard would now be seventy-nine.
It could be him.
Facial analysis suggested a strong match, but investigators wanted more than resemblance.
Then Claire revealed she had seen Richard after her own disappearance.
Once.
In 2010.
He appeared at the safe house where she was living.
He told her never to contact Daniel.
“He said someone was monitoring the Mercer family.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn't tell me.”
Dad's anger turned toward Claire.
“And you listened?”
“I was terrified.”
“You watched me raise Lily alone after her mother died. You watched Mom get old. You stayed gone.”
Claire cried.
“I know.”
The story wasn't turning Claire into a secret hero.
She had been frightened.
She had also made choices that hurt people.
That mattered.
Then I asked something nobody else had.
“What happened to my mother?”
Silence.
My biological mother, Rachel, died when I was six.
Car accident.
I barely remembered her.
If our family history contained false deaths, secret identities and manipulated records, I wanted hers checked.
Dad stiffened.
“Rachel's death was real.”
“How do you know?”
“I identified her.”
That was stronger evidence.
But not enough for me anymore.
Sarah asked Rachel's maiden name.
“Rachel Monroe.”
Her expression changed.
“What?”
Sarah looked at Evelyn.
“You never told them?”
Grandma whispered:
“It wasn't relevant.”
I almost laughed.
Nothing was ever “relevant” until it exploded.
Sarah explained.
Rachel Monroe's mother, Patricia, had used the foundation relocation program.
Rachel grew up under a changed surname.
Dad didn't know.
“Why was her family relocated?”
Sarah didn't answer immediately.
Then:
“Her father.”
My maternal grandfather.
I had been told he abandoned them.
In reality, Patricia fled him.
His name was Victor Hale.
A wealthy Seattle contractor.
And one of the original donors to the Harcourt Foundation.
Victor had been accused privately of coercive control and financial abuse, though no criminal conviction established broader allegations.
Patricia escaped with Rachel.
The foundation hid them.
Years later Rachel met Dad without knowing the Mercer family helped finance the program that protected her.
Another coincidence created by the same network.
Or maybe not.
Sarah said Rachel began investigating her childhood shortly before her fatal accident.
Dad looked stunned.
“She never told me.”
“She contacted me.”
“You knew my wife?”
“Only by phone.”
Rachel had discovered someone was accessing her sealed relocation records.
She feared Victor had found her.
Then she died in a genuine traffic collision caused by another driver who was later convicted of reckless driving.
No secret murder theory was needed.
But after Rachel died, Sarah checked the access logs.
Victor wasn't the person searching.
Richard Sloan was.
My supposedly dead paternal grandfather had been researching my mother before her death.
Why?
Then Sarah placed another document on the table.
Rachel Monroe had been looking for a child.
A baby girl born two years before me.
Dad stared.
“Rachel had another daughter?”
Sarah shook her head.
“Not Rachel.”
“Then whose?”
May you like
She looked toward Angela.
“Angela's.”
