Chapter 6 - The List in My Family
My mother had been dead for twelve years.
My father lived in Arizona and forgot to send birthday cards.
I had always considered my family boring.
Eric’s recording destroyed that illusion.
“My father recorded powerful people,” he said. “But one file is different. Katherine’s mother discovered what he was doing. She threatened to expose him.”
I whispered, “Mom?”
“She made me promise Katherine would never know unless Thomas returned.”
The video ended.
I called my father.
He answered on the fourth ring.
“Merry Christmas early.”
“Dad, did Mom know Thomas Dalton?”
Silence.
“Where did you hear that name?”
My knees weakened.
“You knew.”
My father sighed.
“Your mother worked bookkeeping for Dalton Security.”
“She was a nurse.”
“Afterward.”
“What happened?”
“She found payments that didn’t belong.”
My mother had uncovered Thomas’s surveillance scheme and copied his client index.
Thomas threatened her.
She left the company, changed careers, and hid the copy.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Eric know?”
“Some.”
Every adult in my life had built a protective wall out of lies.
Noah listened from the doorway.
When I hung up, he said, “Everybody lies.”
“Apparently.”
“Even you?”
“Yes.”
He seemed surprised.
“I’m trying to get better at telling the truth before someone catches me.”
He nodded.
“That’s better.”
Christmas decorations glowed around the safe house. Lucy and Noah made paper snowflakes while detectives worked in the dining room.
For one hour, they were children.
Lucy cut hers into something resembling a spider.
Noah said, “That is horrifying.”
“It’s modern art.”
“It’s a snowflake crime.”
I watched them argue and felt grief and gratitude occupy the same space.
Then Daisy asked to speak with me.
She was staying with emergency foster carers nearby.
“Wade talked about you,” she said.
“What did he say?”
“That Noah’s mom had the key.”
“What key?”
“He said she just didn’t know it.”
I thought about my mother.
Her belongings had been boxed after she died.
Most were in my father’s storage unit.
One thing remained with me.
Her old Christmas recipe book.
Every December she made gingerbread from it.
I had not opened it in years.
Police retrieved it from my house.
Inside the back cover was a folded sheet of numbers.
The Dalton list.
Names.
Account codes.
Dates.
And beside several names, the word VIDEO.
Alvarez looked sick.
“This could be blackmail material.”
One name was familiar.
Judge Franklin Mercer.
Wade’s father.
Thomas had blackmailed Wade’s family decades earlier.
Suddenly Wade was not merely an employee seeking revenge.
His hatred had roots.
But nothing excused what he had done to children.
At sunset, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
“Katherine.”
Eric.
I stopped breathing.
“Eric?”
Noah heard me.
He ran across the room.
“Dad?”
Eric began crying.
“My boy.”
Noah grabbed the phone.
“Dad, where are you?”
“Listen to me. I don’t have long.”
“Are you okay?”
“I am now that I heard you.”
“Where are you?”
“Remember the Christmas train.”
Noah looked at me.
“What?”
“The place where it stops.”
The call ended.
Noah whispered, “I know.”
Every Christmas Eric had taken him to the Pine Hollow Railway, a tourist line running through the mountains.
The Christmas train stopped at an abandoned mining village for hot chocolate.
Police raced there.
They found Eric inside the old station.
Alive.
Thin.
Injured, but standing.
Noah ran to him.
Eric dropped to his knees.
I had imagined our reunion thousands of times.
None included police lights reflecting off fake snowmen.
Eric held Noah.
Then looked at me.
“Katherine.”
I could not move.
He whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Before I could answer, Alvarez shouted.
A car was approaching.
Eric’s face changed.
“Get down!”
The vehicle stopped outside.
Nobody emerged.
On the driver’s seat sat a Christmas gift.
Inside was a photograph of Lucy leaving school.
May you like
Thomas had written one sentence beneath it.
YOU GOT YOUR SON BACK. NOW I WANT THE LIST.
