Chapter 4 - The Paper Trail in the Attic
David Mercer did not look like a man who spent his life lurking in the shadows of other people's marriages. He looked like an accountant who had survived sixty-hour tax weeks on lukewarm black coffee and spreadsheets. His eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw was shaded with two days of dark stubble, and his fingers were ink-stained around the cuticles.
"Get down from there," David said quietly, his voice carrying the soft, flat cadence of the North Carolina piedmont. "We shouldn't be in this house. The crime scene tape is on the door."
"The police cleared the living room," I said, descending the wooden ladder with the heavy binder and the manila envelope tucked under my arm. "And this is still my legal residence until I say otherwise."
David watched me step down onto the hallway floor. His eyes dropped to the binder in my hands, then to the camouflage uniform I still wore, and finally to the dark smear of Clara’s blood on my sleeve. His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin.
"How is she?" he asked. The question was raw, stripped of any professional composure.
"Concussion. Two cracked ribs. Four stitches in her lip," I said, my voice deliberately flat. "They shaved her head, David. They used tailoring shears and pulled it out by the roots."
David closed his eyes. He turned his head away, leaning his forehead against the doorframe of the linen closet. A small, ragged breath escaped him—a sound of deep, ancestral grief. "I told her to leave," he whispered. "Two weeks ago. I told her to pack a bag, get on an Amtrak, and come to Charlotte. I told her Margaret was dangerous."
"Why didn't she?"
"Because of you," David said, turning back to me, his eyes burning with an intense, furious sorrow. "She said if she left while you were overseas, Margaret would spin a story that would destroy your trust in her. She said you had spent your whole life being a good son, and if she ran away, you would only have Margaret’s word to believe. She was waiting for you, Nathan. She was counting the days until Friday so she could stand next to you and show you the documents herself."
A cold weight pressed against my lungs.
*She was waiting for me.*
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While I was sitting in the transit barracks in Kuwait, polishing my boots, complaining about the flight delays, buying a stupid silver leaf hair clip at the airport, Clara had been living in a house with a sociopath, guarding the truth with her own body so that I wouldn't hate her.
"Come downstairs," I said.
