Chapter 3 - The Dead Man Who Came Back
"My father is dead."
The words came out automatically.
I'd said them hundreds of times.
At school.
At doctor's offices.
To boyfriends who asked too many questions.
My father died before I was born.
End of story.
Except apparently it wasn't.
Leo stood beside the kitchen island, phone still in his hand.
"Clara," he said, "we haven't confirmed his identity."
I turned on him.
"Then why did you say his name?"
"Because that's the name Keegan heard."
Matteo stepped between us.
"Tell me exactly what happened."
Leo looked at his notes.
"Two people approached Harbor Pines with transfer paperwork."
"Description?"
"One male, approximately sixty. One female, late thirties."
"Vehicles?"
"White medical transport van. Plates were cloned."
I folded my arms tightly around myself.
"Did my mother get into the van?"
Leo hesitated.
"She left the building with them."
"Voluntarily?"
"We don't know."
"What about the woman you moved?"
"An imposter," Matteo said.
I looked at him.
"How do you know?"
"She gave us the wrong medical history."
I blinked.
"What?"
"Rosa asked about your mother's penicillin allergy. The woman said she didn't have one."
"My mother isn't allergic to penicillin."
Matteo froze.
Leo slowly lowered his phone.
I stared at both of them.
"She's allergic to shellfish."
A silence settled over the room.
I felt something cold move through my stomach.
"Who told you she was allergic to penicillin?"
Matteo looked at Leo.
Leo shook his head.
"That information came from her Harbor Pines medical summary."
I laughed bitterly.
"So somebody falsified her records."
"Or replaced them," Leo said.
I took out my phone.
Opened my mother's contact.
Scrolled through our last messages.
An hour before my shift, she had sent me a photograph.
A plate of terrible-looking birthday cupcakes.
Three were crooked.
One had too much frosting.
The message read:
Happy birthday, my brave girl. I wish I could give you the whole world.
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Matteo noticed.
For once, he didn't say anything.
He simply moved a chair closer.
I sat.
Not because he told me to.
Because my legs were shaking.
"My father," I whispered. "Tell me about him."
Matteo pulled out the chair opposite mine.
"His full name was Daniel Patrick Bennett."
I looked up.
"He was a lawyer."
"No."
"Yes."
"Your father handled corporate records for Hawthorne Shipping."
I stared at him.
"And my mother was the accountant."
"Correct."
"That sounds convenient."
"It was."
Matteo's eyes darkened.
"Your parents discovered the same thing at roughly the same time."
"What?"
"Money was disappearing from the company. It wasn't ordinary theft."
"Then what was it?"
"Payments to judges, city officials, police commanders, and men who preferred not to appear on paper."
My head spun.
Boston had always seemed divided into two worlds.
The city I knew had expensive coffee, terrible parking, noisy bars, and rent that made people cry.
Matteo's Boston apparently had an entirely different set of rules.
"Did your father know?" I asked.
His expression changed.
"My father knew everything."
There was something in his voice that made me stop.
"Your father was involved in the fire?"
"He was involved in what happened before it."
"That's not an answer."
"No," Matteo said. "It isn't."
I leaned forward.
"Was he responsible?"
Matteo looked down at his hands.
"My father ordered the Hawthorne building cleared the night of the fire."
I felt the blood leave my face.
"Cleared?"
"The records were supposed to be removed. The employees sent home."
"But seventeen people died."
"Yes."
I stared at him.
"Who started it?"
"We don't know."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I expect you to understand that not every crime in this city was committed by my father."
"Just enough of them."
His jaw tightened.
"Yes."
The honesty startled me.
He wasn't defending his father.
That was almost worse.
"Why would someone fake Daniel Bennett's death?" I asked.
"Because his testimony could have destroyed powerful people."
"Did he testify?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because he disappeared."
I looked at the windows.
"Then why did my mother tell me he died?"
"Because someone showed her a body."
A sound escaped my throat.
"What?"
"An identification was made after the fire."
"She saw him?"
"She saw what she believed was him."
I pressed my palms against my knees.
"And now someone claims he's alive."
"Yes."
"Do you believe it?"
Matteo hesitated.
"There's something you need to see."
He stood.
I didn't move.
"I don't want another surprise."
"I know."
"Then stop giving me surprises."
He walked toward a hallway.
I followed anyway.
We entered a study with dark wood shelves and a large desk.
Matteo opened a locked drawer and removed a photograph.
He placed it faceup.
Two young people stood beside an old brick building.
The woman was laughing.
Her dark hair blew across her face.
She looked so much like me that for a second I thought I was seeing my own reflection.
Mom.
At maybe twenty-five.
Beside her stood a handsome man with black hair and a crooked smile.
His arm was around her shoulders.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written:
Ellie and Danny. June 1999.
My chest hurt.
"That's him."
Matteo nodded.
"Yes."
"Where did you get this?"
"From my father's private collection."
I stared at the picture.
Then noticed something else.
A third person stood in the background, partially hidden by a doorway.
He was younger.
Maybe sixteen or seventeen.
Dark eyes.
Broad shoulders.
A familiar face.
I pointed.
"Who's that?"
Matteo went still.
I looked up at him.
"Matteo?"
He exhaled.
"Me."
I stared at the photograph.
Then at the man standing beside me.
"You knew my parents?"
"Your mother worked for my father."
"You were a teenager."
"Yes."
"And you remember her?"
His eyes remained on the photograph.
"She saved my life."
Before I could ask what that meant, my phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
One message.
A photograph.
My mother sat in a chair beside a window, wearing the blue cardigan I'd bought her last Christmas.
Her eyes were open.
She was holding a folded piece of paper.
The message beneath the photograph said:
Ask Matteo what he did on November 17, 2000.
May you like
Then another message arrived.
Ask him why seventeen people burned while he walked away.
