CHAPTER FOUR
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
At two in the morning, I asked the nurse for my phone.
There were nineteen missed calls.
Most were from Olivia.
Three were from Dad.
One was from a number I didn’t recognize.
I called Olivia first.
She answered immediately.
“Grace?”
Her voice sounded small.
“Why did you tell Dad?”
Silence.
“Tell him what?”
“About the envelope.”
Another silence.
“I didn’t know he would—”
“Would what?”
“He was angry.”
“He tried to leave me inside that car.”
“He didn’t.”
“He told the paramedics not to waste time on me.”
Olivia began crying.
“Grace, I didn’t know.”
“You always know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you knew exactly what you were doing.”
She didn’t respond.
I ended the call.
Then I opened the message from the unknown number.
There was only one sentence.
You need to ask your father what happened to your mother’s money.
Underneath it was a photograph.
I opened it.
My hands began shaking.
It was a bank statement.
The account belonged to my mother.
The beneficiary was me.
And six months earlier, eighty thousand dollars had been transferred into another account.
The name on the receiving account was my father’s.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The transfer had been made from a computer at a law office.
The same law office that had handled my mother’s estate.
I stared at the photograph for several minutes.
Then another message appeared.
The accident wasn’t random.
My heart stopped.
I typed:
Who are you?
The answer came almost immediately.
Someone who saw your father tamper with the car.
