Page 30 of Veil of Silence

Nobody laughed.

Austin stepped closer. “There has to be more.”

Dad hesitated. Then he nodded.

“After Christian disappeared, Roy came to see me. A few weeks later. Maybe a month. He said he’d finally figured out where the extra money was coming from.”

Nora’s pulse picked up. “Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Marlowe threw her hands in the air. “How can you not know?”

Dad’s shoulders sank. “Because I wouldn’t let him tell me.”

Everyone went quiet. Nora was certain she hadn’t heard her father correctly. But she had.

Dad stared down at his hands. “At that point, I didn’t care anymore. Christian was gone. Your mother could barely get out of bed. The three of you weren’t going to sing again. I didn’t want to hear about bookings or promoters or money or any of it.”

“But Roy must have said something,” Austin pressed. “Even if you cut him off.”

Dad swallowed. “He said I had the money backward.”

Austin went still. “What does that mean?”

“He said I kept looking at who was getting paid. I should have been looking at where the money sent us.”

A chill slipped down Nora’s spine. “Where did it send you?”

“I don’t know. I told him I didn’t want to hear another word.” Dad’s voice roughened. “Before he left, he said the person behind it was someone I’d never guess. Someone with access to money nobody knew he had. Then he said someday I’d wish I had listened.”

Nora remembered those months in pieces. Closed curtains. Casseroles stacked in the refrigerator. Her mother sleeping during the day and wandering the house at night.

Her father mostly gone. Looking for Christian, she’d always assumed.

Maybe sometimes he’d simply been trying not to come home.

Her stomach clenched.

Austin was quiet a moment before reaching inside his jacket for his phone. “There was something else in Dad’s car. A note he’d written with three things listed. The Renshaws. October eighteenth. And a question: Who added Fog Lake and why?”

Across the kitchen, a glass hit the granite countertop a little harder than necessary.

Nora turned and saw Christian standing beside the counter with one hand around his water glass.

Christian looked at her. “What?”

“Nothing.”

His fingers stayed curled around the glass.

Dad’s attention remained on Austin. “The Renshaws?”

Austin slipped his phone back into his pocket. “You know them?”

“Of course, I know them. We crossed paths for years.”

“They’re singing at Homecoming at church,” Wren said.