Chapter 4 - The Man Who Came to Help
June emptied the drawer onto the table.
Receipts. Batteries. A screwdriver. An unopened birthday card.
One sheet remained inside the envelope.
Ruth’s letter.
The attached records were missing.
“Who’s been in here?” Daniel asked.
June’s face changed.
“Mark.”
Émilie looked at her aunt.
“When?”
“Two weeks ago. He brought groceries.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“He said the company wanted to help with expenses,” June continued. “I was upstairs getting your insurance paperwork. He stayed in the kitchen.”
“You let him in?”
June recoiled.
The room went quiet.
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said. “You’re scared. So am I.”
Émilie picked up the envelope.
Mark had sent flowers to the hospital. Mark had paid for the ramp outside their house through his foundation. Mark had smiled from the local newspaper beside a photograph of her father’s empty hospital bed.
She had written him a thank-you note.
The memory made her stomach turn.
June called the sheriff’s nonemergency number. A deputy arrived forty minutes later, photographed the envelope, and took screenshots of the message.
He didn’t promise an arrest.
“We need to establish who had access,” he said. “And where the message came from.”
Daniel handed him Ruth’s letter.
The deputy read slowly.
At the bottom, beneath Ruth’s signature, was a sentence Émilie hadn’t noticed.
If anything happens to these copies, the originals are in the place where we used to keep the winter routes.
“What does that mean?” the deputy asked.
“The old dispatch office,” Daniel said.
“Is it still operating?”
“No. They moved three years ago.”
The deputy wrote something down.
“Don’t go there yourselves.”
“We won’t,” June said immediately.
After he left, Daniel called Ruth.
The number had been disconnected.
He tried again anyway.
Then June searched for the old office address.
A property listing appeared.
CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC.
DEMOLITION SCHEDULED.
She turned the laptop around.
The date was Monday.
Two days away.
Daniel stared at the screen.
Then someone knocked on the front door.
Luis, who had stayed behind, went to answer.
A courier stood on the porch with a large envelope addressed to Daniel.
Inside was a proposed settlement.
Enough money to pay the mortgage, the hospital bills, and years of therapy.
On the final page, one paragraph required Daniel to confirm that all safety complaints involving Ellison Transit were unfounded.
June read it twice.
May you like
Then she found the deadline.
Noon tomorrow.
