Chapter 2 - The Photograph in the Background
Evelyn did not sleep.
At two in the morning, she sat on her kitchen floor with a shoebox between her knees. Inside were the things her mother had never managed to throw away: birthday cards, a broken watch, and photographs Daniel Parker had taken before a warehouse fire turned him into a newspaper paragraph.
She had been eight.
Her mother had told her the fire was an accident.
Later, when Evelyn was old enough to notice how adults stopped talking when she entered rooms, her mother had changed the subject.
Now someone wanted her asking questions.
At nine, Evelyn called Caroline.
“Did you tell anyone about the Rourke contract?”
“The whole staff knows. Why?”
“Did anyone ask about my father?”
A pause.
“Evelyn, what happened?”
She described the envelope.
Caroline offered to meet her at the police station. Evelyn agreed, though she already knew what she could report: an old clipping, an unsettling message, no clear threat.
An officer documented it and advised her to preserve everything.
By noon, she was back at her computer, reviewing photographs from the gala.
She needed work she understood.
Exposure. Composition. Light.
Then she enlarged the picture Vincent had wanted deleted.
He stood beside a tall window, face turned slightly toward the glass. Behind him, reflected in the dark pane, Lydia Rourke was passing a green folder to a man near the service entrance.
Evelyn recognized him from local campaign signs.
Alderman Russell Vale.
There was nothing criminal about a folder.
Nothing criminal about two people talking.
But Lydia’s hand gripped his wrist, and his face held the unmistakable anger of someone receiving bad news.
Evelyn checked the images taken before and after.
In one, the folder was open.
Across its top page, three words were visible.
HARBOR HOUSE TRANSFER.
Her phone rang.
Vincent.
“You missed your appointment.”
She had forgotten.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did your family own a warehouse on Erie Street twenty years ago?”
Silence.
Then, carefully, “Why?”
“My father died there.”
She heard him draw a breath.
“Evelyn.”
It was the first time he had used her first name.
“I didn’t know.”
“Your aunt did.”
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“May I come over?”
The question caught her off guard.
He had not said he was coming. Had not asked for her address as though she owed it to him.
After a moment, she gave it.
He arrived alone, carrying no flowers and offering no polished explanation.
Evelyn placed the clipping on her kitchen table.
Vincent read it twice.
“My father owned the warehouse,” he said. “I was nineteen when it burned.”
“And?”
“And he told me a contractor caused the fire.”
“My father wasn’t a contractor. He was taking photographs for an insurance inspection.”
Vincent looked up.
“I didn’t know that either.”
She wanted to believe him.
That frightened her.
“Who handled the insurance?”
“My father. His attorney. Lydia managed the property records.”
Evelyn turned her laptop toward him.
His expression changed when he saw the reflection.
“Harbor House,” he said.
“What is it?”
“A residential property the foundation is supposed to renovate for families receiving long-term medical care.”
“Supposed to?”
“The project keeps getting delayed.”
He enlarged the photograph himself.
For the first time since meeting him, Evelyn watched uncertainty enter his face without being immediately forced away.
“My aunt told the board the property was still awaiting environmental clearance.”
“And this?”
“Looks like a transfer document.”
“To whom?”
“I intend to find out.”
She folded her arms.
“Quietly burying it won’t work for me.”
He met her gaze.
“If someone used my foundation to hurt people, I won’t bury it.”
“Even if it’s family?”
His answer took longer.
“Especially then.”
Before leaving, he wrote an investigator’s name on the back of his business card and offered to pay for an independent review of the fire.
Evelyn declined his money.
He accepted that, too.
At the door, he stopped.
“I was nineteen,” he said. “That explains what I didn’t understand. It doesn’t excuse what I stopped asking.”
After he left, Evelyn checked the shoebox again.
Beneath her father’s watch lay a photograph she remembered from childhood.
Daniel stood outside the warehouse beside a younger Lydia Rourke.
May you like
On the back, in her father’s handwriting, was a date.
Three days before the fire.
