Chapter 7 - What Frank Chose
After Owen asked whether Daniel had died saving him, Frank confessed that Daniel had survived the factory accident.
Hannah stepped onto the porch.
“Tell me everything.”
Frank looked toward the street.
A dark sedan was parked two houses away.
It had arrived moments after Hannah.
“Inside,” he said. “Now.”
Hannah did not move.
“Are they Caldwell’s people?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then say what you have to say here.”
Diane touched Hannah’s arm.
“Please. Owen shouldn’t hear all of this.”
“He has heard lies his entire life,” Hannah replied. “He deserves a truth he can understand.”
Owen stood close to her.
Frank looked at his grandson.
Then he opened the door wider.
They entered the living room.
Almost nothing had changed. The same family photographs stood on the mantel, but every picture of Hannah had been removed.
She noticed an empty space beside her graduation portrait.
Diane saw where she was looking.
“Your father put the photographs away because he couldn’t look at them.”
“That must have been difficult for him.”
The bitterness in Hannah’s voice made Diane lower her eyes.
Frank sat in his old armchair.
“I signed the override,” he began. “Caldwell said the factory would lose its largest government contract if Line Four stopped. He told me everyone’s job depended on me.”
“So you ignored Daniel’s warning.”
“I thought we had two more days.”
“You gambled with people’s lives.”
“Yes.”
The admission seemed to physically weaken him.
“When the pressure rose, Daniel activated the evacuation alarms,” Frank continued. “The control system locked me inside. He came back for me even though I had threatened to have him fired.”
Owen listened closely.
“Dad saved you?”
“Yes.”
Frank’s voice broke.
“He pulled me out. Then security took him to the old clinic. Caldwell said Daniel had to sign a confession or the company would blame both of us.”
“And you told him to run,” Hannah said.
“I thought if he disappeared for a few months, Caldwell would lose interest.”
“You signed him into a rehabilitation center.”
Frank nodded.
“Caldwell’s men sedated him during transport. They staged a vehicle accident and admitted him under another name. I followed them because I was afraid they would kill him.”
Diane covered her mouth.
This was new information even to her.
“Was he conscious?” Hannah asked.
“Not at first. When he woke, he didn’t remember his name.”
Hannah gripped the yellow folder.
“What?”
“The doctors said the head injury had affected his memory. Caldwell ordered them to keep his identity secret.”
“And you allowed that?”
“I told myself it was the only way to keep him alive.”
“You told yourself whatever made silence easier.”
“Yes.”
Frank did not defend himself.
“Six days later, they moved him,” he continued. “I tried to follow, but Caldwell threatened you. He had photographs of you entering the bakery, going to work, visiting the doctor.”
Hannah remembered the sensation of being watched.
“You could have warned me.”
“He said if I contacted you, Daniel would disappear permanently.”
“He disappeared anyway.”
“I know.”
“Where did they take him?”
Frank shook his head. “For years, I didn’t know.”
“For years?”
“Three months ago, Caldwell called me. He said someone had accessed old Westbridge accounts. He thought it was you.”
Hannah exchanged a glance with Rachel’s investigator, who was listening through a concealed phone connection in her handbag.
“Why did Caldwell call after ten years?”
“Because Daniel is alive.”
The room went completely still.
Hannah heard Owen inhale.
“Where?” she demanded.
Frank looked toward the window.
“In a long-term care residence near Lake Carrington. Caldwell has been paying to keep him under another identity.”
Hannah could not move.
Ten years of grief shifted beneath her feet.
Daniel was alive.
Possibly confused.
Possibly waiting without knowing whom he was waiting for.
“Why tell me now?” she asked.
Frank reached beneath his chair and removed a sealed envelope.
“Because Caldwell sent me this yesterday.”
Inside was a photograph of Daniel sitting beside a lake.
He was older and thinner, but unmistakably alive.
Written across the bottom were five words:
Keep Hannah away from Westbridge.
Owen stared at the photograph.
“That’s my dad,” he whispered.
May you like
Before anyone could answer, the dark sedan outside began moving toward the house.
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