The truth had not begun with a dramatic revelation.
It had begun when a young woman rang her doorbell and asked if Richard still lived there.
Caroline showed me a photograph she had taken that day.
The woman on the porch had Mara’s eyes and the same small scar beneath her chin.
I could not establish her identity from a photograph.
I could see why Caroline believed her.
Lillian unfolded a faded sketch of Alder House’s rear staircase.
Two rooms beside it had been marked with pencil crosses.
My father’s initials appeared in the margin.
“Your father said those rooms were not on the building’s official floor plan,” Lillian explained.
I remembered helping him repair plaster in the Mercer Street building years later.
The layout had always seemed strange to me.
There was a wall on the second floor that sounded hollow when struck.
I had forgotten it until Lillian placed the drawing in front of me.
CHAPTER 6: A Message From Jessica
Jessica called while I was driving home from the library.
I let the call go to voicemail because I did not trust myself to answer safely in traffic.
Her message was short and oddly formal.
“David, I found something in Richard’s office, and I think you need to see it before I go back to work.”
I parked outside a grocery store and called her.
She said Richard had given her access to an old records cabinet while preparing a company anniversary exhibit.
In the cabinet was a file labeled Mercer Transition.
She had seen the label months earlier and dismissed it as an internal project name.
Now she remembered a photograph of the same building Caroline had shown me.
“I have a copy of the inventory list,” Jessica said.
“I didn’t take anything confidential beyond the document I already had for work.”
I told her not to collect more material without speaking to an attorney.
She agreed and emailed me the inventory she was authorized to use.
The list named a historical storage contractor that had moved donated furniture when Alder House closed.
Its current owner was a woman called Nina Calder.
A penciled note referred to a sealed trunk and a box of correspondence marked Evelyn Lawson.
I pulled into Aaron’s parking lot and forwarded the document to Caroline with Jessica’s permission.
Caroline called back almost immediately.
“Richard said he burned every letter Evelyn ever wrote,” she said.
Her voice grew unsteady.
“He told me he couldn’t bear to keep them.”
