CHAPTER SEVEN
The police searched the Lincoln that evening.
They found a plastic container hidden beneath the driver’s seat.
Inside were traces of the same substance found in the fuel system.
Dad claimed it wasn’t his.
Then investigators checked his fingerprints.
They were all over it.
He still denied everything.
Until they found the security footage.
A camera outside Aunt Meredith’s house showed Dad walking toward the Lincoln alone.
He opened the fuel cap.
He looked around.
Then he poured something into the tank.
The video was timestamped less than an hour before the accident.
Detective Harris showed me the footage.
I watched it without saying anything.
There was no longer any doubt.
My father had tried to kill me.
But Detective Harris wasn’t finished.
“There is another issue.”
“What?”
“The eighty thousand dollars.”
He placed another document in front of me.
“The money wasn’t simply transferred to your father.”
I looked down.
It had been transferred into a second account.
Then another.
Then another.
Finally, it had been used as a down payment on a property.
I recognized the address.
My father’s new house.
The house he had told everyone he couldn’t afford.
The house I had helped him pay for without knowing where the money came from.
I felt sick.
“He stole my mother’s money to buy that?”
“Yes.”
“And when I found out?”
“He panicked.”
I closed my eyes.
Everything made sense.
My acceptance letter.
My decision to leave.
The bank envelope.
Olivia’s confession.
The accident.
Dad had realized that if I left, I might uncover everything.
So he decided I was easier to erase than to explain.
