Chapter 2 - The Funeral That Never Made Sense
I didn't remember starting my car.
I only remembered the black SUV pulling away from the curb when I did.
At the first intersection, I turned right.
The SUV followed.
At the second intersection, I turned left.
It followed again.
My breathing grew shallow.
I had never been followed before.
At least, I'd never known I was being followed.
I drove toward a busy shopping center instead of heading home.
The parking lot was crowded with delivery trucks, parents loading groceries, and employees arriving for morning shifts.
I pulled beneath a security camera outside a pharmacy.
The SUV continued past the entrance.
I watched until it disappeared.
Then I locked my doors.
My phone was resting on the passenger seat.
The two threatening messages stared back at me.
I wanted to call Eliam.
The instinct was so strong that my fingers had already found his name before I remembered he was part of the secret.
I couldn't trust him.
I couldn't trust my father.
And I no longer knew whether the people I'd mourned were actually dead.
I called my best friend, Natalie.
She answered on the second ring.
"You're supposed to be at work."
"I need you."
Something in my voice changed hers immediately.
"Where are you?"
I gave her the address.
"Stay there," she said. "I'm coming."
Twenty minutes later, Natalie climbed into my passenger seat carrying two bottles of water and the kind of expression she'd worn when her oldest son broke his arm.
"Start talking."
I showed her the photograph.
She stared.
Then she enlarged it with both fingers.
"That's Rachel."
I nodded.
"No, I mean that's really Rachel."
"I know."
Natalie looked at me.
"Where did you find this?"
I explained everything.
The medication.
The receptionist.
The weeklong leave.
The building.
Eliam.
Rachel.
My father.
The messages.
By the time I finished, Natalie was gripping the water bottle so tightly that the plastic crackled.
"Call the police."
"And tell them what? That my dead sister is alive and somebody sent me a creepy text?"
"Yes."
"Nine years ago, the police told me she died in a car accident."
Natalie hesitated.
"That was never exactly what they said."
I turned toward her.
"What?"
She looked uncomfortable.
"Do you remember how everything happened?"
"Of course I remember."
But as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized I remembered certain things very clearly and others barely at all.
Rachel had been twenty-three.
I was twenty-six.
We'd grown up in a large house outside Milwaukee, where our father controlled nearly everything.
Arthur Bennett was a wealthy construction executive.
He owned commercial properties throughout southeastern Wisconsin and served on several nonprofit boards.
In public, he was charming.
At home, he expected obedience.
Rachel had always been the rebellious one.
She asked questions.
She challenged him.
She refused to pretend our childhood had been happy just because the house was expensive.
The last time I saw her, we'd argued in my kitchen.
She'd arrived unexpectedly, carrying a backpack and an old blue folder.
She wanted me to meet with a lawyer.
She said she'd discovered something about our father's business.
I told her I wanted no part of another family fight.
Rachel accused me of being afraid of him.
I accused her of inventing conspiracies whenever she felt ignored.
Then she said something I'd spent nine years trying to forget.
"One day you're going to find out what he is, and you'll wish you'd listened."
She left.
Three days later, Dad called.
Rachel's car had been found near a flooded quarry.
The police believed she'd driven through a damaged barrier during a storm.
Divers found personal belongings and evidence suggesting someone had been in the vehicle.
There was no identifiable body.
Dad told me the remains had been recovered later and privately cremated.
He said the identification process was too traumatic to discuss.
I believed him.
Why wouldn't I?
He was my father.
Natalie reached for my hand.
"You never saw a death certificate, did you?"
I stared at her.
"I saw paperwork."
"Paperwork he gave you."
I slowly nodded.
Natalie looked out the windshield.
"Do you remember what Rachel told me the week before she disappeared?"
I shook my head.
"She said your father had people watching her."
A cold sensation traveled down my back.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I did."
"No."
"I called you. You told me Rachel was having another breakdown and asked me not to encourage her."
I remembered the conversation now.
Or pieces of it.
I'd been exhausted.
Dad had spent months telling me Rachel was unstable.
He said she was drinking too much and making reckless accusations.
And I had believed him.
My eyes filled with tears.
"What if she was telling the truth?"
Natalie said nothing.
I looked at the photograph again.
My father stood behind Rachel with one hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
He was smiling.
She wasn't.
There was something else in the picture I'd missed.
A woman stood near the edge of the frame.
Middle-aged.
Dark-haired.
Wearing a cream blazer.
I recognized her immediately.
Margaret Ellis.
The director of Harbor House.
Natalie leaned closer.
"What is it?"
I enlarged the image.
Margaret was holding a folder.
On the folder was a familiar logo.
A blue circle divided by three white lines.
Bennett Development Group.
My father's company.
I remembered Rachel accusing him of using charitable organizations to move money.
At the time, I thought she was being dramatic.
Now I wasn't so sure.
"Nat."
"Yeah?"
"I need to find the original police report."
She nodded.
"And I need to know what was actually inside that urn."
We went directly to a law office downtown.
Natalie's cousin, Daniel Price, handled civil litigation and records requests.
He agreed to help us retrieve the original documents.
I gave him everything I remembered.
He listened without interrupting.
Then he asked one question.
"Who signed the cremation authorization?"
"My father."
"And who identified the remains?"
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Daniel typed something into his computer.
A few minutes later, he frowned.
"That's strange."
"What?"
"Rachel Bennett doesn't appear in the state's death-index search under the date you gave me."
I leaned forward.
"Maybe it's a clerical error."
"Possible."
He typed again.
Then stopped.
"But there's something else."
He turned the monitor toward us.
A court record had appeared.
An emergency petition filed nine years earlier.
The petitioner was Arthur Bennett.
The requested action was a legal declaration of presumed death.
And beside the petition was another document.
One I had never seen.
OBJECTION TO DECLARATION OF DEATH.
Filed by someone named Rebecca Hale.
The same name Rachel had used at Harbor House.
I stared at the document.
Daniel opened it.
Most of the filing was sealed.
But one sentence remained visible.
The missing individual is not deceased, and the petitioner has direct knowledge of her continued survival.
Natalie gasped.
My father hadn't merely lied about Rachel's death.
Someone had formally told a court she was alive.
And he'd proceeded with the funeral anyway.
Then Daniel scrolled down.
His face changed.
"There's an attached order."
He read silently.
"What does it say?" I demanded.
He looked at me.
"The judge denied your father's petition."
I blinked.
"What?"
"Your sister was never legally declared dead."
The room seemed to tilt.
"But her funeral..."
Daniel studied the screen.
"Your father held a memorial service. Legally, those aren't the same thing."
He continued scrolling.
Then his expression tightened.
"There's a sealed exhibit here."
"Can you open it?"
"No. Not without permission."
"What's the exhibit?"
He hesitated.
"A witness statement."
"From who?"
May you like
He looked up at me.
"From your husband."
