The message remained on my phone long after the screen dimmed.
YOU HAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT TO GIVE US THE LEDGER. OR YOUR FATHER DOESN'T MAKE IT TO MORNING.
Nobody spoke for several seconds. The lake outside the car was black beneath the night sky, and the distant lights along the shoreline looked strangely peaceful compared with the panic inside us.
Dad finally broke the silence. “Give it to them.”
I turned toward him. “What?”
“The ledger.” His voice was quiet. “Give them what they want.”
“No.”
“Emma, listen to me.” He reached for my hand, but his fingers were trembling too badly to close around mine. “They threatened me. Not you. If giving them that book keeps you and Lily safe, then that's what we do.”
I stared at him. After everything I had learned, hearing him make another decision for us almost felt like being sixteen again, standing in my bedroom while he told me I was better off staying home.
“You still don't understand,” I said. “This isn't about protecting me.”
His eyes lowered.
“You've spent twenty years deciding what I could handle,” I continued. “You decided I shouldn't go to dinners. You decided I shouldn't meet people. You decided Clara shouldn't talk to me. You decided what Lily should know. And now you're deciding that we should hand over the one piece of evidence that might prove what happened to Mom.”
Lily leaned forward from the back seat. “Emma's right.”
Dad looked at her.
“For once,” Lily said, “let us decide.”
Dad's face tightened, but he didn't argue.
Clara had been silent beside me, staring at the ledger through the plastic sleeve I had placed over it. “The threat gives us something important.”
“What?”
“They're afraid of the ledger.”
I looked at her.
“If they weren't afraid,” Clara said, “they wouldn't have given us a deadline. They would have taken it already.”
That changed the room.
Dad slowly nodded.
Clara continued, “They also said your father won't make it to morning. That means they believe they can reach him. Or they want us to believe they can.”
“So what do we do?” Lily asked.
Clara looked at me. “We don't deliver the original.”
I opened the ledger.
The old pages were yellowed and fragile, filled with handwriting, account numbers, dates, initials, transfers, and handwritten notes. One page carried the forged payment to JC. Another showed the trust transfer from before Mom's death.
I took photographs of every page.
Then Lily photographed them again with her phone.
Clara watched us work. “We need copies somewhere they can't erase.”
“I can send them to my husband,” I said.
Dad shook his head. “No. Don't bring him into this.”
“He's already in it,” I answered. “He was standing in my house when the first threat came.”
Dad opened his mouth, but Lily interrupted.
“And we need Thomas.”
The name hung in the car.
Thomas Cross.
Daniel Cross's son.
The younger man who had accompanied Martin to the old house.
Clara's expression changed. “If Thomas knows what his father did—”
“Or if he doesn't,” I said, “he might know where Daniel is.”
Dad stared at the lake.
“I've never trusted that family,” he said.
“You trusted Martin,” Lily replied.
Dad looked wounded.
“That wasn't fair,” she added softly. “But it's true.”
He didn't answer.
My phone buzzed.
Everyone froze.
Another message appeared.
YOU HAVE LESS THAN TWO HOURS.
Then another.
THE LEDGER. NO COPIES.
Clara leaned closer.
“They know what we're doing.”
I felt cold spread through my chest.
“How?”
Nobody answered.
Then Dad looked at the rear window.
A dark SUV was parked across the road.
It had been there when we arrived.
I remembered the dark car from Mom's photograph.
The same shape.
The same black windows.
“Don't move,” Dad whispered.
We sat still.
The SUV remained motionless for nearly a minute.
Then its headlights came on.
It pulled away.
Lily exhaled.
Dad closed his eyes.
“That's the car,” he said.
“What car?”
“The one from your mother's photograph.”
The old fear returned to his voice.
But this time I didn't feel sixteen.
I felt awake.
“We're not going home,” I said.
Dad looked at me.
“We're going somewhere they won't expect.”
“Where?”
I held up my phone.
“Thomas Cross.”
We drove to the address printed on his business card.
The office was dark when we arrived. A brass plaque beside the door carried only the name CROSS CONSULTING.
I knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
Then a light appeared upstairs.
A man's voice called, “Who's there?”
I stepped closer.
“Emma.”
Silence.
Then the lock turned.
Thomas Cross opened the door.
He looked older than I remembered from the house, exhausted rather than threatening. His eyes went immediately to Dad.
“You shouldn't have come here,” he said.
Dad stiffened. “You know who I am.”
Thomas looked at him for a long moment.
“Yes.”
“Then you know why we're here.”
Thomas stepped aside.
“Come in.”
The office smelled like paper and coffee.
He locked the door behind us.
When he saw the ledger, his face changed.
“Where did you get that?”
“My mother kept it.”
Thomas swallowed.
“She did.”
“You know about it?”
“I know enough.”
I placed the ledger on his desk.
“Then tell me what happened to her.”
Thomas looked at Dad.
Then at me.
“Your mother discovered the company transfers,” he said. “My father helped Richard hide them. Martin handled the movement of money. Your father signed documents he didn't understand because they were presented as routine guarantees.”
Dad's face went pale.
“What about the payment to JC?”
Thomas looked directly at him.
“That wasn't you.”
“I know.”
“No,” Thomas said. “You don't understand. My father created the entry after your wife died.”
The room went silent.
“Why?” I asked.
“To make it look like your father had received money.”
“Why would they need that?”
“To make him legally vulnerable if the investigation ever surfaced.”
Dad sat down.
Thomas opened a drawer.
He removed a folder.
“My father kept copies.”
He placed the folder beside the ledger.
Inside were documents Mom had apparently never seen.
One contained a list of payments.
Another showed a meeting schedule.
A third had Martin's signature.
But the final page stopped me.
It was dated three days before Mom died.
At the bottom was a handwritten note.
SHE HAS THE ORIGINAL PROOF.
I looked at Thomas.
“What does that mean?”
He didn't answer immediately.
“My father was afraid your mother had copied everything.”
“Where?”
Thomas shook his head.
“I don't know.”
Dad suddenly stood.
“You do.”
Thomas looked at him.
“You know something about the house.”
Thomas's face tightened.
“My father believed your mother hid the original records somewhere he couldn't reach.”
“Where?”
Thomas looked at the ledger.
“Inside something she gave Emma.”
My heart stopped.
“What did she give me?”
Thomas's eyes moved to me.
“A blue dress.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 14: The Blue Dress I Had Kept for Twenty-Two Years Was Not a Memory After All, and the Hidden Evidence Changed Everything We Thought We Knew About Mom
On My Thirty-Eighth Birthday, My Father Arrived Carrying a Locked Box That Made Twenty Years of Silence Suddenly Feel Deliberate
Part 13 of 20
