Chapter 10 - THE CALL FROM SOPHIE’S SCHOOL
I moved Sophie.
Again.
Grant arranged temporary police protection.
For a week, our life became hotel rooms, borrowed clothes, takeout dinners, and whispered adult conversations after Sophie fell asleep.
Then she asked me something that broke me.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, bug?”
“Did I make Amanda bad?”
I put down my coffee.
“No.”
“Because I took her phone.”
I knelt beside her.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“She was going to marry you.”
“I know.”
“And now she can’t.”
“That’s because of choices Amanda made. Not you.”
Sophie thought about that.
“Is she a bad person?”
That question was harder.
“I think Amanda did some bad things.”
“Does she love me?”
I swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Sophie looked down.
“I loved her.”
There it was.
The part adults always forget in stories like ours.
Sophie had lost someone too.
Not the real Amanda.
The Amanda she believed existed.
That afternoon, my phone rang.
Sophie’s preschool.
Except Sophie wasn’t at preschool.
She had been temporarily withdrawn.
I answered anyway.
“Mr. Carter?”
“Yes.”
“This is Linda from Rosehill Preschool.”
“What happened?”
“A man came asking for Sophie.”
My stomach turned to ice.
“What man?”
“He said he was her grandfather.”
Both of Sophie’s grandfathers were dead.
“What did he look like?”
“Late sixties. Gray hair. Tall.”
Daniel Mercer would have been sixty-seven.
“Did you see his car?”
“He left when we said Sophie wasn’t here.”
Grant traced the traffic cameras.
A dark blue sedan left the school at 2:14 p.m.
Registered to a fake company.
It disappeared into a parking garage downtown.
They found the vehicle two hours later.
Empty.
But inside the trunk was Sophie’s missing pink backpack.
And my mother’s sealed envelope.
The envelope had been opened.
Someone had read it.
But the letter was still inside.
My hands shook when Grant gave it to me.
The first sentence was in my mother’s handwriting.
Ryan, if Claire gives you this, then Daniel came back.
I stopped breathing.
I continued.
My mother explained that Daniel had stolen from several family-controlled accounts.
When she discovered it, he blamed Howard.
Howard blamed Daniel.
She believed both men were involved.
She had been preparing evidence for federal investigators.
Then came the final paragraph.
There is one thing Daniel does not know. I copied everything. The files are in the place your father built for you when you were ten.
I knew exactly what she meant.
The lake cabin.
My father had built me a tiny hidden storage space beneath the old boathouse floor.
I had not been there in twenty years.
Grant immediately ordered officers to secure the property.
But before she could make the call, mine rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A man said:
“Your mother always did love that cabin.”
May you like
Then the line went dead.
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