Chapter 3 - What My Mother Didn't Burn
Nora's mother answered on the fifth ring.
"It's nearly midnight," Denise Keene said. "Is something wrong at the diner?"
"I met Silas Rourke."
Silence filled the line so completely Nora could hear her mother's kitchen clock ticking.
"Mom?"
"Come over in the morning. Don't talk about this on the telephone."
"He says Dad kept a red notebook."
Denise exhaled. "The house key is still under the little blue pot. Come now, if you have to."
Nora drove across town with the envelope on the passenger seat. She passed boarded storefronts, a school playground, and the loading dock where her father used to wait with a thermos of coffee while she finished evening classes. The city had changed enough that she sometimes forgot he had known a different version of every road.
At her mother's house the porch light was on. Denise stood inside wearing a bathrobe and the slippers Nora had bought her last Christmas. She was sixty-one, with rough hands and the tight posture of a woman who had held herself steady for too long.
"Did he threaten you?" Denise asked.
"No. Men working for someone named Dorian Pike did. Silas made them leave."
Denise closed her eyes. "I told Paul that man would ruin us."
Nora set the dispatch ticket on the kitchen table.
"You've seen this before."
"Not that copy."
"Where's the notebook?"
Her mother sat down as though the question had weight.
"Paul brought it home the week before the fire. He'd written down deliveries Silas asked him to make, payments he couldn't explain, truck numbers, dates, and people who were supposed to sign for things. He was getting ready to go to an attorney."
"Why didn't he?"
"He did. A local attorney told him to preserve everything and stop making deliveries. Paul worried that stopping would put another driver in danger. He decided to recover the original warehouse records first."
"He knew what he was doing?"
"He knew enough to be afraid. He didn't know the rear exit was chained that night."
Denise led Nora to the garage. Behind a shelf of paint cans stood an old metal toolbox. Inside were a spare ignition key, a photograph of Paul and two other truck drivers, and a notebook wrapped in waxed paper.
Nora touched its scarred red cover.
"You told me this burned."
"I was told to say it burned."
"By Silas?"
"No. A man came after the funeral and said there were people who would make your life miserable if the notebook ever surfaced. I didn't know his name then. I do now. It was Dorian."
Nora opened the notebook carefully. There were delivery dates, names, and initials she didn't understand. On the last filled page Paul had written: MERCER—COLD STORAGE DOOR CHAINED. ASK FOR RELEASE COPY. Then, in smaller writing: SILAS SAYS ONE LAST TRIP.
The line hurt worse than anything Silas had admitted. Her father had known it was the final job, but not in the way it became.
"Did you ever show this to the police?" Nora asked.
"I showed part of it to a lawyer. They said it suggested business fraud, but it didn't establish who caused the fire. I was frightened, Nora. You were in college. I had a mortgage. I let him frighten me."
"You let me believe Dad made a mistake that killed him."
"I let you believe what the investigators told us, and I hated myself for it."
Nora wanted an apology and knew an apology would not restore those twelve years. She placed the notebook in a clean grocery bag.
"This stays with me until a lawyer copies it."
Denise did not argue. Instead, she went to the cupboard and returned with an unopened letter addressed to Nora in her father's handwriting.
"He gave me that three days before he died. Told me to give it to you if anything happened. I couldn't bear to."
Nora stared at the envelope, appalled at how many choices grief had taken from other people and made without her consent.
"You should have told me."
"I know."
She opened it with a butter knife. Her father's first sentence was ordinary: I know you're angry I missed your graduation practice. The next was not.
If I don't make it home, find the person whose name is written beneath the last delivery in the red book. He heard what I heard.
May you like
Nora flipped to the final notebook page and lifted it toward the stove light.
Below the dates, almost hidden by a coffee stain, were two words: REGGIE WALLACE.
