Chapter 3 - the photograph behind the clock
When Samuel and Lily returned home, Samuel went directly to the wooden clock above the fireplace.
Lily watched from the hallway.
The clock had not worked for six years. Samuel had refused to throw it away because Evelyn had given it to him during her final Christmas at the house.
He removed it from the wall and placed it on the table.
Behind it was a narrow compartment he had created long ago.
Inside were three photographs, a brass key, and a sealed letter.
Samuel picked up the first photograph.
Michael stood outside his medical school wearing a graduation gown. Evelyn stood beside him, smiling as he held her around the waist.
In the second photograph, Michael and Evelyn were sitting on the hood of Samuel’s old truck. Michael’s hand rested protectively against Evelyn’s stomach.
The third photograph had been taken at St. Aurelia Hospital.
Michael stood beside Victor Cross, the hospital’s chairman and Evelyn’s father. Between them was Lenora Vale, the hospital administrator.
All three wore formal clothes.
Only Michael looked unhappy.
“Grandpa?”
Samuel turned.
Lily stood behind him, staring at the photographs.
“Is that Mommy?”
Samuel closed his eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
“Who’s the man holding her?”
Samuel placed the photograph on the table.
“His name is Michael.”
“The doctor from television?”
“Yes.”
Lily’s fingers tightened around her stuffed rabbit.
“Is he my father?”
Samuel looked at her face.
Evelyn’s smile.
Michael’s eyes.
Helen’s stubborn chin.
All the answers had been visible for years.
Samuel had kept the truth hidden because Evelyn begged him to. On the night she brought six-month-old Lily to his house, she had been frightened and injured. She said Victor Cross had destroyed Michael and would do the same to their child if he discovered where Lily was.
Samuel had asked where Michael was.
Evelyn said he was gone.
Two days later, police reported Michael’s car had fallen from a coastal road. Investigators found blood inside but no body.
A week after that, Evelyn disappeared.
Samuel had spent six years telling himself that silence protected Lily.
Now he wondered whether his silence had protected the people hunting her.
“I believe he is,” Samuel said.
Lily did not move.
“You believe?”
“Your mother told me he was.”
“Does he know?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Samuel knelt in front of her.
“Because your mother was afraid.”
“Of him?”
“No. Of the people around him.”
Lily looked toward the hospital photograph.
“The old man?”
“Victor Cross. Your mother’s father.”
“My other grandpa?”
Samuel’s expression hardened.
“By blood, perhaps.”
“Does he know about me?”
“I don’t know.”
Lily touched the photograph of Michael and Evelyn.
“Mommy looks happy.”
“She loved him very much.”
“Did he love her?”
“With everything he had.”
“Then why did he leave?”
Samuel took a slow breath.
“He and I had an argument. I believed things about him that were not true.”
“What things?”
“Someone accused him of stealing medicine from the hospital. I thought he had ruined his career.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
Samuel knew that now.
Months after Michael’s disappearance, a former nurse had sent Samuel copies of hospital records proving that the medications had been ordered under Michael’s identification after he had already been suspended.
Samuel had tried to reopen the investigation.
The nurse disappeared before she could testify.
The police called the documents insufficient.
Victor Cross called Samuel a grieving old man looking for someone to blame.
Samuel showed Lily the brass key.
“Your mother gave me this the last night I saw her.”
“What does it open?”
“She never told me.”
The sealed letter beside it had Evelyn’s handwriting on the front.
For Lily, when the doors are finally opened.
Samuel had never broken the seal.
He had promised Evelyn he would wait.
Lily reached toward it.
“Are the doors open now?”
Samuel looked at the blue envelope.
Then at Michael’s photograph.
“Not yet.”
A car slowed outside the house.
Samuel moved toward the window.
A black sedan stopped across the street.
Its headlights remained on.
He could not see the driver.
After several seconds, the car pulled away.
Lily hugged the rabbit against her chest.
“Was someone watching us?”
Samuel folded the photographs and returned them to the compartment.
“Pack your backpack.”
“Are we going to the hospital?”
“First, we are going somewhere your mother told me never to visit.”
“Where?”
May you like
Samuel slipped the brass key into his pocket.
“The old train station.”
