What He Found

It took her three days to piece it together.

The address on Route 9 was a storage facility. She'd known that from the county records — it was in the name of a trust connected to Drake's family, some property his father had bought decades ago and never developed. She'd assumed he was storing things there. Equipment, maybe, or files.

The PI had been thorough, because that's what she paid him for. He'd run the facility's records, which were technically public, and come back with a list of current leaseholders.

One name on the list was not Drake.

Ellen Marsh. 409 Maple Drive.

Ellen Marsh was her mother.

Liza sat at the kitchen table and read the PI's report and felt the floor shift under her. Her mother had been dead for six years. Ellen Marsh was not renting a storage unit eight miles from Liza's apartment.

Somebody was, though. And whoever it was had the same name as a dead woman.

She called Gavin.

"You have to tell me what's in unit 14," she said.

"Liza, I don't know what you're—"

"You went there. You've been going there, haven't you? That's what he knows. That's the Aaron thing."

A long silence.

"It's not what you think," he said.

"Tell me anyway."

The silence was very long.

"There's something in that unit," he said. "From the old house. From the house on Linden Street. Things he left there — things I didn't want to move when we cleaned out the house after Mom died." He paused. "I didn't want you to see them."

She closed her eyes.

"What things, Gavin?"

"Papers," he said. "From when you were kids. Before Drake. Before all of it." Another pause. "Including something Mom found. Something she'd hidden. I didn't know what to do with it, so I put it in storage and I've been — I've been sitting on it. For six years."

"What did Mom find?"

"Liza."

"Tell me."

The silence was longer this time.

"A letter," he said. "From someone who worked for Dad. Something about what really happened at the shop — the fire, the insurance claim. Mom found it after he died. She put it away because she didn't know what to do." He stopped. "And because she was afraid of what Drake would do if he found out."

The floor shifted again. She gripped the edge of the table.

"Drake's father," she said.

"Yeah," Gavin said. "Dad's partner. The shop. It was fraud, Liza. All of it. The insurance claim. The fire. And your husband — your ex-husband — he knew. He was part of it, even then, even before." He stopped. "That's what he found. Not from the storage unit. From me. From six years of me not knowing what to do with something I couldn't prove."