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Poor visibility.
Wet pavement.
Words designed to explain why a husband and father would never come home.
Grandpa never believed them.
Neither did I.
“What does that mean?” Ben asks Elliot through the body camera. “Simon was where?”
“Blackwater,” Elliot answers.
Hazel begins shaking her head.
“No. Dad died in his car.”
“He died a week after fighting with Grandpa,” Storm says. “That doesn’t mean he died at Blackwater.”
Mom looks toward Thomas.
“You knew.”
Thomas’s face collapses.
“I suspected.”
“You knew Daniel went back there.”
“I knew he planned to confront someone.”
“Who?”
“Donald Cross.”
Mom steps away from Nathan.
“You let Daniel go alone?”
“I tried to stop him.”
“You should have told me.”
“Daniel made me promise I wouldn’t.”
“He was my husband!”
Thomas flinches.
“He believed the less you knew, the safer you and the girls would be.”
“Everyone keeps saying that,” I whisper.
Five pairs of eyes turn toward me.
“Dad kept secrets to protect us. Grandpa kept secrets to protect us. Thomas kept secrets to protect us.” The anger inside me breaks through the shock. “Dad still died. Grandpa spent the rest of his life hiding evidence, and now Simon is hunting all of us.”
Ben’s voice comes through the monitor.
