Chapter 6 - THE MAN WHO KEPT THE WRONG SECRETS
I went home that evening and confronted my mother.
She was sitting in her favorite chair, a heating pad wrapped around her hands.
I placed the blue envelope on the table.
"Mom."
She looked up.
Her face changed.
"Where did you get that?"
I swallowed.
"From Mrs. Ellis."
My mother closed her eyes.
For a moment, she looked twenty years older.
"How much do you know?"
I stared.
"Enough to know Dad worked for the Voss family."
She nodded.
"And enough to know he saved Adrien's life."
Tears filled her eyes.
"Sophie—"
"Is Dad alive?"
The question hung between us.
My mother began crying.
I felt sick.
"Mom."
She shook her head.
"I don't know."
I sat beside her.
"What happened?"
She told me the truth.
Or as much as she knew.
After the crash, my father came home terrified.
He said someone had tried to kill Adrien and his father.
He had evidence.
But he didn't trust anyone.
Not the police.
Not the Voss family.
Not even his employer.
He planned to leave Chicago.
Then he disappeared.
Three days later, my mother received a phone call.
A stranger told her Thomas had died in an accident.
She was given documents.
A death certificate.
A sealed coffin.
And a warning not to ask questions.
I stared.
"You never saw his body?"
She shook her head.
I felt my stomach drop.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
She began sobbing.
"Because you were sixteen."
I looked away.
"Mom—"
"I thought telling you would put you in danger."
I wanted to be angry.
Part of me was.
But looking at her, I saw the fear she'd carried for twelve years.
I took her hand.
"We need to find out what happened."
She shook her head.
"Sophie, please."
I looked at her.
"Mom, I've spent twelve years believing Dad died on a highway."
My voice broke.
"If there's even a chance he didn't, I have to know."
She stared at me.
May you like
Then slowly nodded.
And that was when I realized the twelve dollars and forty cents I'd spent at The Linden Room had led me into a mystery my family had been running from for more than a decade.
