Chapter 3 - My Wife’s Death Certificate Contained a Signature From My Own Company—And Suddenly I Couldn't Trust the Night Everything ChangedI hadn't slept.
Neither had Vincent.
We searched everything.
Security reports.
Insurance claims.
Police records.
Hospital files.
Every document from the night Audrey supposedly died.
Most were legitimate.
One wasn't.
A transfer authorization.
Signed by my private security director.
That man had died five years ago.
We found no explanation.
Then Lily entered the room.
“How's your foot?”
I looked at her.
“Still there.”
She smiled.
“Good.”
“You're not normal.”
She laughed.
“Nope.”
I almost smiled.
Then she pointed toward an old photo on my desk.
“That's him.”
“Who?”
“The man who came to Grandma's house.”
I followed her finger.
She was pointing at a photograph of my former security director.
“How do you know him?”
“He came to our house before we moved here.”
“When?”
“After Mom was born.”
I stared at Maria when she entered.
She turned pale.
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
“Then who told her about him?”
Maria shook her head.
“I don't know.”
I asked Lily:
“What did he say?”
“He told Grandma not to talk about Audrey.”
My heart stopped.
“Where?”
“In the kitchen.”
“When?”
“Before Grandma died.”
That meant my wife's family had known something.
Something they had never told me.
I opened Audrey's old private journal.
I had kept it sealed for years.
Most pages contained ordinary thoughts.
One entry was different.
If Caleb ever asks about the garden girl, tell him not to trust the house.
I stared at the words.
Garden girl.
Lily.
The journal was eight years old.
Lily wasn't even born.
So what did it mean?
I looked at Maria.
She started crying.
“Your wife knew my mother.”
“How?”
“They worked together.”
“On what?”
Maria hesitated.
“A clinic.”
I stared.
“What clinic?”
She gave me an address.
An old rehabilitation center.
The place where I had undergone my first physical therapy after the accident.
My stomach turned.
I had never known Maria's mother worked there.
Maybe I should have.
I went that afternoon.
The building had been abandoned for years.
Inside, the therapy rooms were stripped.
But one office remained locked.
I found the key in the old records.
Inside was a file.
My name.
Audrey's name.
And a third name.
Lily's grandmother.
The file contained neurological reports.
Not mine.
Audrey's.
She had been studying my condition.
Not as a patient.
As a witness.
The final page read:
Caleb's paralysis is not caused by the spinal injury alone.
I stopped.
Below:
The injury was deliberate.
My hands shook.
“Lily.”
She stood in the doorway.
“You found it.”
I looked at her.
“How did you know this was here?”
She shrugged.
“Grandma told me.”
“Why didn't she tell me?”
“Because she said you weren't ready.”
I looked at the report again.
“Ready for what?”
May you like
Lily's expression changed.
“The part where your wife is still alive.”
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