“No.”
The word left me before Eduardo finished speaking.
My father had lied about small things. He claimed old cars could hear insults. He told Mom he had eaten lunch when he had skipped it. When money was short, he pretended he wanted the smaller portion.
But betray Mom?
Give Eduardo the location where she had taken Isabel?
“No.”
Eduardo watched me without blinking.
Isabel stood beside the cassette player, one hand still resting on the table. Roger had gone completely motionless. Even Patricia stopped crying.
Arthur spoke first.
“Daniel called you?”
Eduardo nodded.
“When?”
“The morning after Mariana took Isabel.”
Roger shook his head. “That makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. Dad was with her.”
“Yes.”
“Then why would he tell you where they were?”
Eduardo leaned back.
“Because Daniel Lopez understood something Mariana did not.”
My anger rose.
“Which was?”
“That she could not win.”
I stood.
“You don’t get to make him a coward because you had more money.”
“I did not say he was a coward.”
“You said he betrayed her.”
“I said he told me where they were.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
His certainty stopped me.
Eduardo looked toward the windows.
“Daniel negotiated.”
Arthur stared at him. “With you?”
“Yes.”
“You never told me.”
“There were many things I did not tell you.”
Arthur laughed bitterly. “Apparently.”
Isabel pressed the stop button on the cassette player.
The sudden silence felt enormous.
“What did Daniel ask for?” she said.
Eduardo’s gaze shifted to her.
“Time.”
“For what?”
“To get Mariana and the children beyond my reach.”
My heart stumbled.
“You just said he gave them up.”
“I said he disclosed the motel.”
“Why?”
Eduardo rested both hands on his cane.
“Because I had already found Elena.”
My skin went cold.
I was five years old in 1998.
I remembered kindergarten in fragments: paste on construction paper, a yellow lunchbox, Mom waiting outside the school gates.
Nothing about danger.
Eduardo continued.
“Mariana took Isabel without authorization. Daniel went with her. You stayed with a neighbor.”
I searched my memory.
Mrs. Hernandez.
I remembered sleeping on her couch once.
Cartoons too loud.
A blanket smelling like fabric softener.
“Mrs. Hernandez.”
Eduardo nodded.
“I had people watching the house.”
“You threatened a five-year-old?”
“I never intended to harm you.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“You keep saying things like that as if intentions erase what people reasonably believed you might do.”
For the first time, Eduardo had no immediate answer.
He continued more quietly.
“My investigator photographed you leaving school with Mrs. Hernandez. Daniel learned we knew where you were.”
Roger closed his eyes.
“So Dad traded Isabel for Elena.”
Isabel flinched.
I turned toward her.
“No.”
Roger looked at me.
“That’s what happened.”
“No. That’s what Eduardo wants it to sound like.”
Eduardo’s voice sharpened. “I have no need to shape it.”
“You’ve shaped every story in this family.”
Isabel met my eyes.
The hurt there was restrained, but unmistakable.
I stepped toward her.
“I don’t know what Dad did. But I know he wouldn’t decide one child mattered more.”
“How can you know?”
“Because he raised Roger knowing Roger wasn’t biologically his.”
Roger looked down.
I continued.
“He knew love wasn’t ownership.”
Eduardo stared at me.
Something about my sentence disturbed him.
“What?” I demanded.
He said nothing.
Arthur noticed too.
“Father.”
Eduardo exhaled.
“Daniel proposed an exchange.”
My stomach tightened.
“What exchange?”
“He would tell me where Mariana had taken Isabel if I guaranteed Elena’s safety and abandoned any effort to establish Arthur’s paternity of Roger.”
Roger whispered, “That’s the agreement.”
“No,” Eduardo said. “That came later.”
We all stared at him.
“There was another bargain?”
“A verbal one.”
Arthur’s expression darkened. “You promised him?”
“Yes.”
“And then you still used Roger against Mariana.”
Eduardo looked at him.
“Yes.”
Arthur’s face twisted.
“You broke your word.”
The irony was almost unbearable.
Eduardo replied, “I changed the terms when Mariana refused to accept reality.”
Roger struck the table.
Glasses jumped.
“You promised my father you would leave us alone.”
Eduardo did not correct the word father.
“Yes.”
“And then you threatened to take me anyway.”
“Yes.”
Roger turned away.
Patricia reached toward him, then stopped before touching him.
I looked at Eduardo.
“What did Dad receive besides promises?”
“A meeting with Isabel.”
Isabel stared.
“When?”
“The motel.”
“You let him say goodbye?”
“No.”
Eduardo’s voice changed.
“Daniel insisted I hear something first.”
“What?”
Eduardo glanced at the cassette.
“A recording of his own.”
Arthur swore under his breath.
“How many recordings are there?”
“Enough.”
I wanted to scream.
My family had apparently spent decades leaving evidence in drawers, vaults, offices and pockets while Roger and I grew up believing our greatest inherited problem was high cholesterol.
“Where is Daniel’s recording?”
Eduardo looked at me.
“I do not have it.”
“Who does?”
“Mariana did.”
My mind returned to Mom’s house.
The calendar.
The key.
The envelope.
The torn sweater.
“What was on it?”
Eduardo hesitated.
“Daniel explaining why he called me.”
My anger faltered.
“He recorded himself?”
“He knew Mariana might never forgive him.”
Isabel whispered, “Did she?”
Eduardo looked at the photograph of Mom holding her.
“I do not know.”
I thought of my parents together.
Dad bringing Mom coffee before she asked.
Mom cutting his hair on the back porch.
The two of them dancing badly in the kitchen on their anniversary.
Whatever happened in 1998 had not ended their marriage.
That mattered.
“Then she learned the truth,” I said.
Eduardo’s eyes met mine.
“Perhaps.”
My phone buzzed.
Miguel.
I stepped away and answered.
“Tell me you’re still at the hotel,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Good. Don’t leave through the lobby.”
“Why?”
“Someone just broke into your mother’s house.”
My chest tightened.
“What?”
“A neighbor called police after seeing two men force the back door.”
Mrs. Hernandez.
“Did they take anything?”
“Police are there now. House was torn apart.”
The key had led me to the safe-deposit box.
The documents were with Miguel.
What else could they want?
“Did they find something?”
“No idea. But Elena, there’s another problem.”
I closed my eyes.
“Of course there is.”
“I checked Daniel Lopez’s death records.”
The room around me seemed to recede.
“What about them?”
“The certificate says heart failure.”
“That’s how he died.”
“Maybe.”
I gripped the phone.
“What does maybe mean?”
“His original hospital toxicology report is missing.”
I turned toward Eduardo.
He was watching me.
Miguel continued.
“And the physician who signed the certificate worked for an Aranda-owned hospital.”
My stomach dropped.
“Are you saying my father was killed?”
“I’m saying I can’t verify the medical story you were given.”
Across the room, Arthur saw my expression.
“What happened?”
I ignored him.
Miguel said, “There’s more. Somebody requested Daniel’s archived medical file three days ago.”
“Who?”
“The request came through an attorney.”
“Name?”
Miguel told me.
I knew it.
I lowered the phone.
Everyone was waiting.
Roger asked, “What?”
I looked at Patricia.
Her face changed before I spoke.
“The attorney who requested Dad’s medical records works for Mercer Holdings.”
Roger turned toward Eduardo.
My grandfather frowned.
“I did not authorize that.”
Patricia whispered, “Then someone else has access.”
Arthur’s phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His face drained.
“Who?” Isabel asked.
He answered without speaking and listened.
Then he looked at Eduardo.
“Security found your driver.”
Eduardo’s grip tightened on his cane.
“Where?”
“In the parking garage.”
Arthur swallowed.
“He’s dead.”
No one moved.
Eduardo’s aide stepped toward the door.
Arthur held up a hand.
“There’s more.”
His eyes shifted to me.
“The car is gone.”
I remembered the black vehicles outside Harold’s office.
The men at Mom’s house.
The missing medical file.
Someone was moving faster than all of us.
Eduardo rose.
For the first time, his age showed.
“If my driver was killed, this is no longer about Mariana’s trust.”
Isabel asked, “Then what is it about?”
Eduardo looked at Arthur.
Then Roger.
Finally at me.
“Someone believes Daniel left evidence.”
I thought of Mom’s hidden key.
The safe-deposit box.
The recording Eduardo claimed Daniel had made.
“Evidence of what?”
Eduardo’s expression hardened.
“Of the one thing Mariana never discovered.”
“What?”
He looked toward the cassette player.
“Who actually ordered the threats against your family.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: The Search for Daniel’s Recording Led Back to Mom’s Torn Sweater, Where She Had Hidden the Clue Everyone Else Overlooked
My Mother’s Funeral Should Have Ended the Questions, but One Missing Sweater Thread Led Me Back to Everything She Hid
Part 9 of 24
