Chapter 3 - THE DAUGHTER BEFORE THEM
Daniel did not believe Laura.
He also did not hang up.
They met ninety minutes later at a diner beside the interstate.
Daniel chose the table nearest the entrance.
Laura noticed.
“You think I'm dangerous?”
“I think my mother's dead and a stranger with my last name sold everything in her storage unit.”
Laura accepted that without arguing.
She placed a canvas document pouch on the table.
“I didn't know Nathan hadn't told you.”
“Told me what?”
“That I existed.”
Daniel folded his arms.
Laura opened the pouch.
First came an amended birth certificate showing her adoptive parents.
Then adoption correspondence.
Then a photocopy of an original intake sheet.
INFANT FEMALE.
Birth mother:
Evelyn Claire Hayes.
Daniel read the line twice.
The date was forty-four years earlier.
Two years before Nathan was born.
Six years before Daniel.
“Copies prove nothing.”
“I know.”
Laura produced three handwritten letters.
Daniel recognized Evelyn’s handwriting immediately.
The first began:
Dear Laura, I have written this opening so many times that I am ashamed the paper knows you better than I do.
Daniel stopped reading.
The second was dated seven months earlier.
The third, four months earlier.
Laura watched him.
“I took an ancestry test two years ago. Last year I found enough records to identify Evelyn. I wrote to her.”
“Nathan knew?”
“Not at first.”
“Dad?”
“He was already dead.”
Richard Mercer had died eight years earlier from a heart attack.
Daniel looked at Laura carefully.
“Who was your father?”
Laura’s expression tightened.
“Evelyn said that part was complicated.”
“What does that mean?”
“She told me she would explain when we met in person.”
“You never did?”
“Three times.”
Daniel looked up.
Laura corrected herself.
“We met three times.”
His chair scraped the floor.
“My mother was meeting you?”
“In secret.”
“Why?”
“She was terrified of what it would do to your family.”
“You were her family.”
Laura's eyes hardened.
“That's what I told her.”
The anger sounded too practiced to be invented on the spot.
Daniel sat again.
Laura explained that Evelyn had contacted her six months earlier.
Their first meeting lasted forty minutes in a park.
The second was at Laura’s townhouse.
The third happened two weeks before Evelyn’s stroke.
“She said she was going to tell both of you.”
“Why didn't she?”
“She kept delaying.”
Daniel heard resentment beneath the grief.
“So after she died, Nathan contacted you?”
“The morning after.”
“What did he say?”
“That Mom had told him everything.”
Daniel noticed the word immediately.
“Mom?”
Laura looked embarrassed.
“She asked me to call her that. I only did when we were alone.”
Daniel looked away.
His mother had gained a daughter during the last six months of her life and never told him.
Laura continued.
“Nathan said you were angry. He said you didn't want to meet me and didn't want anything from the storage unit.”
“He lied.”
“I know that now.”
“He asked you to run the sale?”
“He told me Evelyn had left instructions giving me authority to inventory her things. That part was true. He said the family wanted the rest liquidated.”
Daniel remembered the authorization Lisa had shown him.
Inventory, organize, transfer, or otherwise prepare.
Not sell.
“Did Mom specifically tell you to sell anything?”
“No.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“Then why did you?”
Laura swallowed.
“Because Nathan showed me emails he said were from you.”
Daniel’s anger became strangely calm.
“What emails?”
She opened her phone.
There they were.
Messages forwarded by Nathan.
Daniel supposedly telling his brother:
I don't want any of it.
Sell whatever Mom left in storage.
Laura can handle it if she wants to play daughter.
Daniel read the last sentence twice.
“I never wrote this.”
Laura nodded slowly.
“I believe you.”
“You believed it yesterday.”
“Yes.”
The admission cost her something.
Daniel pushed the phone back.
“What was the blue thing you were looking for?”
Laura froze.
“How do you know about that?”
“A buyer saw you asking.”
She reached into the document pouch and removed Evelyn’s third letter.
Near the bottom, Daniel read:
There is something in storage I need Daniel to see if I lose my chance to speak to him myself.
The cedar chest is important.
Do not let Nathan remove it before Daniel has seen what is beneath the family photograph.
Daniel remembered the picture that had been sitting on top of the chest.
He had already checked its cardboard backing.
Nothing.
He had opened the chest.
Only an old blanket.
“Did she mention a blue envelope?”
Laura nodded.
“On our last phone call. She said legal papers had been put in a blue envelope.”
“When?”
“The night before her stroke.”
Daniel felt the chronology lock into place.
Evelyn suffered the stroke eleven days before she died.
The authorization naming Laura was dated five days after the stroke.
When Evelyn could barely move.
“How was that authorization signed?”
“I asked Nathan the same thing. He said Mom had signed several documents earlier and the attorney dated them when they were processed.”
“Which attorney?”
“He wouldn't tell me.”
Daniel pointed to her phone.
“What did Nathan say about the chest?”
Laura opened another message.
Nathan:
Add the cedar chest. Daniel specifically said he doesn't want it.
Laura:
Evelyn told me not to move that one.
Nathan:
She's gone, Laura. Stop turning every object into a message from the dead.
Laura:
I want Daniel to see it first.
Nathan:
He already did.
Underneath, Nathan had sent:
He says sell it.
Daniel stared at the words.
Laura lowered the phone.
“You weren't supposed to arrive today, were you?”
Daniel realized she was right.
Nathan had told him the unit could wait until Friday.
Daniel had gone on Wednesday because his meeting was canceled.
If he had followed Nathan’s suggestion, every item would have been gone.
Including the chest.
Daniel gathered the letters.
“I'm taking photographs.”
Laura nodded.
As he photographed the final page, he saw something near Evelyn's signature.
A line Laura had apparently overlooked because a crease ran directly through it.
Daniel flattened the sheet.
It read:
If Richard's old papers are where I left them, Nathan may understand why I have been afraid to tell you both.
Daniel pointed at the sentence.
“Richard.”
Laura leaned closer.
“My father?”
“No.”
Daniel looked at her.
“My father.”
For the first time since they met, Laura seemed genuinely frightened.
Daniel turned the page over.
May you like
At the very bottom Evelyn had written six words.
Nathan knows enough to be dangerous.
