Chapter 2 - THE HOUSE THAT REMEMBERED
I took Evelyn and the twins to my private residence outside Chicago.
Not my mansion.
The mansion had staff, cameras, drivers, and too many people who knew my schedule.
I needed somewhere nobody expected me to be.
An old lake house my father had bought before I was born.
The boys slept upstairs.
Evelyn sat across from me at the kitchen table.
She looked exhausted.
I placed the forged document between us.
“Start from the beginning.”
She stared at it.
“I was pregnant when you left.”
My heart stopped.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“You knew you were carrying my children?”
“I found out three weeks after you left for Singapore.”
I leaned back.
“Why didn't you call me?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Every day.”
“Your number was disconnected.”
“Mine wasn't.”
I frowned.
“I called your office.”
“My assistant told me you had asked not to be contacted.”
Evelyn's eyes filled.
“I never said that.”
I stood.
“My mother told me you left voluntarily.”
“She told me you had decided I was embarrassing your family.”
My jaw tightened.
“What?”
“She said you had changed your mind about marriage.”
I stared at her.
Neither of us spoke.
Six years.
Six years built on conversations that had apparently never happened.
Then Evelyn reached into her purse.
She removed an old phone.
The screen was cracked.
“I kept this.”
She opened the message history.
Hundreds of messages.
Most were never delivered.
But several had been received.
I saw my own name.
My own number.
My stomach twisted.
The messages were from me.
Except I had never sent them.
Don't contact me again.
The pregnancy changes nothing.
My mother will arrange support.
I don't want the children involved in my life.
I stared at the screen.
“I never wrote these.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because one message called you Marcus Vance.”
I looked at her.
“You never called me that.”
She shook her head.
“You always hated being called by your last name.”
Someone had impersonated me.
Someone had known enough about us to make the messages believable.
“Who?”
Evelyn swallowed.
“Your mother.”
I felt anger rise immediately.
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“You lived with her?”
“No.”
“Then how did she know about the pregnancy?”
“Because she came to my apartment.”
“When?”
“Two days after you disappeared.”
My hands curled into fists.
“What did she say?”
Evelyn looked toward the staircase.
“The same thing she had always said.”
Her voice became quieter.
“That I would destroy your future.”
I sat down again.
“She offered me money.”
“How much?”
“Enough to disappear.”
“And you refused.”
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
Evelyn hesitated.
“She showed me photographs.”
My blood went cold.
“Of what?”
“You.”
I stared at her.
“Marcus, they were photographs of you entering a hospital.”
“What hospital?”
“I didn't know.”
“Were you injured?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“She told me you had been involved in something dangerous.”
I remembered the year before Evelyn disappeared.
My father's company had been under federal investigation.
Several contracts had collapsed.
My mother had become increasingly secretive.
I had assumed it was business.
Maybe it wasn't.
“Then she said something else,” Evelyn whispered.
“What?”
“That if I stayed, I would put you in danger.”
Silence.
“And then?”
“She disappeared.”
I frowned.
“Who?”
“The woman who had been helping me.”
“Who was she?”
“I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“She called herself Nora.”
I stared at Evelyn.
“What happened to her?”
“She died.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“When?”
“Five years ago.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
I stood abruptly.
“Where?”
“Outside Milwaukee.”
My phone rang.
My security director.
I answered.
“Sir, we found something.”
“What?”
“The gray-coat man from the airport.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Adrian Cross.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“What does he do?”
“He used to work for your mother.”
My blood went cold.
“Used to?”
“He disappeared six years ago.”
I looked at Evelyn.
“Anything else?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“He has been monitoring you for eight months.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“Why?”
“We don't know.”
“Find out.”
I ended the call.
Evelyn stared at me.
“Marcus…”
“What?”
“There is something else.”
“What?”
She reached into her suitcase.
She removed a small envelope.
Yellowed with age.
My name was written across it.
In handwriting I recognized immediately.
My father's.
I opened it.
There were only six words.
If Eleanor says Evelyn left, don't believe her.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
My father had died seven years ago.
One year before Evelyn disappeared.
Which meant he had known something.
And he had tried to warn me.
I looked toward the sleeping boys upstairs.
May you like
For six years, I had believed my mother had protected the family.
Now I wondered whether she had been protecting herself.
