Chapter 2 - LAURA PARKER
Daniel did not move.
Neither did Helen.
The prescription bag hung from his other hand.
“What?”
Helen released his wrist.
“I said there's something you don't know.”
“That part I heard.”
He looked at the house.
“Is it about the insurance?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
Helen climbed the porch steps.
Daniel followed.
She unlocked the front door, stepped inside, then stopped beneath the framed photograph of Frank Parker that had hung in the entryway since his funeral eight years earlier.
Frank at fifty-nine.
Sunburned.
Work boots.
Hammer over one shoulder.
Standing in front of the same house before the siding went on.
Daniel had always loved that photograph.
Now Helen looked at it like evidence.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Daniel.”
“You stopped taking medicine to keep this house insured. I'm not sitting through the slow version.”
Helen's shoulders dropped.
“Fine.”
She walked into the dining room.
There was a certified-mail envelope beneath a stack of grocery circulars.
Daniel noticed it because someone had opened it and then folded the letter back inside badly.
Helen handed it over.
The sender was a Boston law office.
MORGAN, KENT & WELLS
Daniel unfolded the first page.
The language was dry.
Property address.
Book and page references.
Old probate case number.
Request for accounting.
Request for preservation of records.
Then a name.
Laura Parker Whitcomb.
Daniel frowned.
“Who's Laura?”
Helen sat down.
Daniel looked up.
His mother did not answer.
His pulse changed.
“Mom.”
“Your father had a daughter before you.”
Daniel laughed because the alternative was accepting the sentence immediately.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Helen looked at him.
“Her name was Laura.”
Daniel stared.
“How old?”
“Forty-six now.”
He was thirty-nine.
Seven years.
Old enough that this was not some affair discovered late in a marriage.
Old enough to have existed before Daniel.
“Where is she?”
“I don't know exactly.”
“The lawyer knows.”
“Yes.”
“Does she know about me?”
Helen's expression hurt.
“Yes.”
Daniel lowered the letter.
“I have a sister who knows I exist.”
“A half-sister.”
He stared at her.
“That is the part you're correcting?”
Helen looked away.
Daniel returned to the letter.
It did not demand possession of the house.
It requested an accounting related to something called the Laura Parker Minor Settlement Trust and a 1993 Residential Use Agreement.
Daniel read the sentence twice.
“What does she have to do with this house?”
Helen's lips pressed together.
“Her money helped build it.”
Silence.
Daniel looked toward the kitchen doorway.
Same oak trim his father had milled.
Same floor.
Same walls.
“How much?”
“I don't remember the exact number.”
“That means you remember enough.”
Helen said:
“Seventy-four thousand dollars.”
Daniel stared.
In 1993, seventy-four thousand dollars was not a small contribution.
“What money?”
“A settlement.”
“For what?”
Helen rubbed her hands together.
“Laura's mother died.”
Daniel felt the room shift again.
Frank had been married before?
“No.”
Helen saw the question.
“He wasn't married to her.”
Laura's mother, Elaine Whitcomb, had dated Frank when they were barely out of high school.
Laura was born when Frank was twenty-one.
Frank and Elaine separated before Laura turned two.
Elaine raised her.
Frank visited irregularly.
Then Elaine died in a highway accident when Laura was twelve.
A civil settlement followed because a commercial truck had been involved.
Laura received money.
Her maternal aunt became guardian of her person.
Frank became co-trustee over part of the settlement because he was her biological father.
Daniel looked at Helen.
“And Dad used it to build this.”
“Not the way you're thinking.”
“I don't know what I'm thinking yet.”
“The court approved some of it.”
That stopped him.
“What?”
Helen stood.
“Laura came to live here.”
Daniel looked around.
“When?”
“When you were little.”
“I would remember a sister.”
“You were three.”
“How long?”
Helen hesitated.
“About nine months.”
Daniel laughed once.
“There was another child living in this house for nine months, and no one ever mentioned her.”
Helen's eyes filled.
“She left.”
“Why?”
“That is another part.”
Daniel picked up the lawyer's letter.
“What does Laura want now?”
“An accounting.”
“Of seventy-four thousand dollars from thirty-three years ago?”
Helen looked toward Frank's photograph.
“No.”
Daniel followed her eyes.
“What aren't you saying?”
May you like
Helen answered quietly.
“The seventy-four thousand was supposed to buy her part of this house.”
