I drove home with both hands gripping the steering wheel.
The anonymous message remained open on my phone, its words bright against the dark screen. I had read it so many times that I could recite it without looking.
The next person who gets hurt may not be someone who can protect themselves.
Lily was the first person I thought of.
Daniel called our mother while we were still on the road. She answered immediately, and he told her about the message without mentioning the details of our visit to the workshop.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she asked, “Where is Mara?”
“I'm here,” I called.
“Are you with Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“Come straight home. Don't stop anywhere.”
Her voice was so urgent that I felt my stomach tighten.
“What do you know?” I asked.
“I'll explain when you arrive.”
“Mom, someone just threatened us.”
“I know.”
The words came so quietly that I almost missed them.
“What do you mean, you know?”
She didn't answer. I heard a door close on her end of the call, followed by the sound of her footsteps.
“Please,” she said. “Just come home.”
The line went dead.
Daniel looked at me.
“She knows more than she's told us.”
“I think she's been afraid for thirty years.”
“Of what?”
I glanced at the photograph lying on the passenger seat.
“Of someone who never stopped looking.”
When we reached the house, my mother was waiting at the front door. She had put on her coat and was holding her handbag, although she hadn't left the house since returning from the pharmacy.
“Where's Lily?” I asked.
“Upstairs.”
“Is she all right?”
“She was frightened. She received a message on the tablet you gave her.”
My heart lurched.
“What message?”
My mother stepped aside to let us enter.
“I didn't open it. I thought you should see it first.”
I ran upstairs.
Lily sat on her bed with the tablet resting beside her. She looked up when I entered, and I could tell she had been crying. Her stuffed rabbit was clutched beneath one arm.
“Mommy, did I do something wrong?”
I sat beside her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders.
“No. You haven't done anything wrong.”
She leaned against me.
“Someone said I should stop talking about Grandma's room.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
“Did you tell anyone about the room?”
She shook her head.
“I only told you.”
“That's right.”
“Then how did they know?”
I didn't have an answer.
I asked her to show me the message. It had arrived through a children's game she occasionally played with a classmate. The sender had used a blank profile and included a picture of our house taken from across the street.
Beneath it were the words:
Little girls should keep family secrets.
My skin prickled.
The photograph had been taken recently. The front garden looked exactly as it had that morning, including the small red bicycle Lily had left beside the porch.
I took screenshots and saved them. Then I turned off the tablet and placed it in my bag.
“Has anyone asked you to keep a secret from me besides Grandma?” I asked.
Lily hesitated.
I kept my voice soft.
“You won't be in trouble for telling me.”
She looked at the rabbit in her lap.
“Grandma said I shouldn't tell you about the picture. But another person told me something, too.”
“Who?”
“I don't know. It was on the phone.”
“What did they say?”
Lily swallowed.
“They asked whether Grandma was still staying with us. I didn't answer.”
“When was this?”
“Yesterday.”
I looked toward the door.
My mother had been home with Lily yesterday afternoon. She had told me she spent the time reading and resting.
“Did the person say their name?”
“No. They said they knew Grandma.”
I kissed Lily's forehead and told her to stay in her room while I spoke with Daniel. Then I went downstairs, carrying the tablet.
My mother and brother were standing in the kitchen. Neither spoke when I entered.
I placed the tablet on the table.
“Someone contacted Lily yesterday. They also sent her a photograph of our house today.”
My mother's face went white.
“Oh, God.”
“Who is it?”
She gripped the back of a chair.
“I don't know.”
“You knew someone might come after us.”
“I suspected someone might still be searching for the documents.”
“Then why didn't you tell us?”
“Because I thought the danger had passed.”
“When?”
My mother looked at the tablet.
“After Robert died.”
Daniel's expression sharpened.
“You believed whoever was looking for Evelyn would stop because Dad was dead?”
“No. I believed they would stop because the records were gone.”
“What records?” I demanded.
My mother drew a shaky breath.
“The blue ledger.”
I felt the words settle between us.
“What's in it?”
“Names. Payments. Property transactions. Things your father discovered while helping Arthur Bell with a legal matter. Evelyn believed the ledger proved that several people had used false identities to take property from families who couldn't afford to fight them.”
“Was that why she disappeared?”
My mother nodded slowly.
“She said she had copies of the records and intended to give them to someone who could expose the people involved. Your father tried to persuade her to wait. He thought he could arrange a safer way to do it.”
“Did he succeed?”
“I don't know.”
Daniel leaned against the counter.
“You said the records were gone.”
“They were missing when Robert died. I searched his study, his workshop, and every box he kept. I couldn't find the ledger or the copies Evelyn had mentioned.”
“Then why do you think someone is still looking for it?” I asked.
“Because, two months ago, I received a letter.”
My mother went to the sitting room and returned with a small envelope. It had been folded and unfolded so many times that the edges were soft.
She placed it on the table.
The letter contained only a few lines.
We know the family has the key. We know the children are old enough to ask questions. Tell them to stop before they uncover what their father tried to bury.
There was no signature.
I read the words twice.
“Why didn't you tell me when you received this?”
“Because I didn't know whether it was real. I thought someone was trying to frighten me into doing something foolish.”
“And now?”
My mother looked toward the staircase.
“Now they've contacted Lily.”
The room fell silent.
I thought about the false storage account, the photograph, the message at the workshop, and the note my father had left in his desk. The clues no longer felt like separate pieces of a puzzle. They seemed to be parts of the same warning, passed from one person to another until it reached us.
I picked up the letter.
“Where did this come from?”
“It was delivered to my apartment.”
“You haven't lived in your apartment for three weeks.”
“I received it before I came here.”
“Then someone knew where you lived before you moved in with us.”
My mother nodded.
“And someone knew I would bring you the key.”
Daniel looked at the brass key on the table.
“Unless they knew about it long before that.”
My mother stared at him.
For the first time, I understood that she wasn't merely afraid of what we might discover. She was afraid that the person responsible already knew exactly what we would find.
I put the letter into a folder with the photograph and my father's notebook.
“We're not going to keep searching blindly,” I said. “We're going to make copies of everything, document every message, and find out who has been using my name.”
My mother began to cry, but she didn't ask me to stop.
Then Lily appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Mommy?”
I went to her immediately.
She held out a small piece of paper.
“I found this in my backpack. It wasn't there when I went to school.”
I unfolded it.
The handwriting was unfamiliar, and the paper smelled faintly of cigarette smoke.
The message contained a single sentence.
Ask your grandmother what happened to the boy in the photograph.
I looked up at my mother.
She had followed me into the hallway. When she read the note, she grabbed the railing to steady herself.
Then she whispered a name I had never heard before.
“Thomas.”
Daniel came up behind us.
“Who is Thomas?”
My mother stared at the note, tears slipping down her cheeks.
“The boy's name,” she said. “Evelyn's son.”
She looked directly at me.
“And the last time I saw him, your father was taking him somewhere he promised no one would ever find.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: My Mother Finally Revealed Where She Had Last Seen Evelyn’s Son, but Her Confession Raised a More Terrifying Question
The Moment My Daughter Began Crying, I Realized There Was Something She Had Been Afraid to Tell Me
Part 8 of 26
