Chapter 3 - The Gate That Had Been Rebuilt Overnight
Laura answered after Ryan’s third call.
“I was wondering when you’d hear that message.”
“What did my mother pay Victor for?”
Laura exhaled.
“I shouldn’t have sent it like that.”
“You already did.”
“I was angry.”
“At Victor?”
“When am I not?”
Ryan closed his eyes.
“Laura.”
She became serious.
“I don’t know the whole story.”
“What do you know?”
“Nine months ago, Victor got forty thousand dollars from your mother.”
Ryan sat down.
Exactly nine months.
The date Noah was born.
“How do you know?”
“I was still married to him.”
Laura had handled their household finances because Victor could never keep track of anything beyond his next purchase.
A $40,000 transfer had appeared in their joint account from Margaret.
Victor moved almost all of it into an account Laura couldn’t access.
Two days later, he told Laura they were leaving Tennessee for several months.
“He said your mother was paying him to disappear.”
Ryan felt his stomach tighten.
“Disappear because of Noah?”
“He never said Noah.”
“What did he say?”
“That something happened at the estate.”
Ryan looked toward the windows.
“What?”
“I asked. He told me to mind my business.”
Laura hesitated.
“But that night he came home with dirt all over his clothes.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.”
“And Derek?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
Ryan stood.
“What about Derek?”
“He came with him.”
Ryan remembered something.
The eastern service gate at Hawthorne Ridge.
On the morning after Noah was born, Ryan had driven home from the hospital briefly for clothes.
Half the stonework around that gate had been covered with plywood.
His mother had told him landscaping equipment had damaged it.
Ryan hadn’t cared.
His son had been born twelve hours earlier.
His wife, Hannah, had been exhausted after a difficult delivery.
A broken gate meant nothing.
Now Ryan asked Laura, “Was Victor driving that night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there an accident?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“Because the next morning Derek called Victor and asked whether ‘the old lady had handled the repair story.’”
Ryan stopped walking.
“The old lady?”
“That’s what Derek called your mother.”
Ryan stared toward the darkened hallway.
His mother had given Victor forty thousand dollars.
The estate gate had been destroyed.
Derek had helped.
And the entire thing had happened while Ryan was at Williamson Medical Center holding Noah for the first time.
Laura said one more thing.
“Ryan, Victor was scared that night.”
“Of my mother?”
“No.”
May you like
“Then what?”
“Of what would happen if you found out.”
