“Is my mother alive?”

His eyes filled with tears.

“I don’t know.”

The honesty hurt more than any lie.

Arthur explained everything slowly, pausing whenever pain forced him to breathe.

Thirty years earlier, Victor Morales had accused Elena of being mentally unstable in order to seize control of the Morales family fortune. Arthur fought the case until witnesses began disappearing, documents vanished, and their attorney suddenly withdrew.

Then came the fire.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Arthur whispered.

“They burned the house?”

“They tried to.”

He stared at the ceiling.

“Elena got you out through the bedroom window. I caught you outside. She was supposed to follow.”

“What happened?”

“She ran back.”

“Why?”

“To get the evidence.”

“The evidence?”

“She had ledgers… recordings… documents proving Victor had stolen millions from the family company.”

I remembered the certified records my father had needed.

“The adoption records…”

“They weren’t adoption papers.”

“They were inheritance records.”

Arthur nodded.

“I told you adoption because your wife was listening.”

A chill ran through me.

“You didn’t trust Jessica.”

“I didn’t trust her questions.”

He reached for my hand.

“Has she tried to get the envelope?”

I hesitated.

“Yes.”

His grip tightened surprisingly hard.

“She has keys, doesn’t she?”

“How did you know?”

“Because someone has been searching my house for months.”

My father lived in a small blue bungalow fifteen minutes outside Portland.

After leaving the hospital, I drove there with his permission.

The front door showed no signs of forced entry.

Inside, everything looked normal.

Almost.

A picture frame sat slightly crooked.

A kitchen drawer hadn’t been fully closed.

The rug beneath the coffee table had been turned ninety degrees.

Tiny things.

Things only someone who lived there would notice.

Arthur had noticed.

In his bedroom closet, he pointed me toward an old cedar chest.

The key was taped beneath the bottom drawer.

Inside were dozens of neatly organized folders.

Birth certificates.

Court filings.

Newspaper clippings.

And one leather journal belonging to my mother.

I opened to the first page.

If anything happens to me, Ethan deserves to know I never abandoned him.

My vision blurred.

The journal wasn’t filled with dramatic confessions.

It contained recipes.

Sketches.

Little stories about my first words.

The way I insisted ducks were called “yellow boats.”

A pressed maple leaf from our first family camping trip.

She had been building a memory book for me.

Halfway through the journal, her handwriting changed.

It became hurried.

Uneven.

Victor knows about the recordings.

Arthur says we should leave Oregon.

I’m scared he’s right.

The final entry stopped mid-sentence.