“Mr. Thorne? Rachel Diaz, Department of Children and Family Services. We received an anonymous report alleging that four minor children are being kept in unsafe conditions at this address, and that their mother has a criminal record and a history of homelessness.” She looked past me at the girls. “I need to come in.”
CHAPTER 4: WHAT THE MAILROOM KEPT
The caseworker spent two hours in my apartment.
She looked in the refrigerator, which I’d stocked with enough food for an army. She looked at the bedroom, where I’d bought four little beds. She talked to each of the girls alone. Pip told her the bathtub had “a jet that makes bubbles,” which seemed to be a point in our favor.
At the end, Ms. Diaz closed her notebook.
“Mr. Thorne. Ms. Brennan. I can see these children are safe and well cared for. I’ll be closing this report as unfounded.” She hesitated at the door. “Off the record? The person who called this in had a lot of very specific details. Details someone close to your family would know.”
After she left, Maren sat down on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands.
“They’re going to keep coming,” she whispered. “Whoever did this seven years ago. They’re going to keep coming until we’re gone again.”
“No,” I said. “This time we find them first.”
I called the one person in my family’s company I trusted completely. Dolores Fitch. She’d run the Thorne family office for thirty-one years. She’d known me since I was in diapers. She knew where every piece of paper in that building had ever gone.
“Dolores,” I said. “Seven years ago, between March and May. I need to know if any mail came to the family office addressed to me from the Port Easton County Jail.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“Give me a day,” she said.
She called back the next afternoon. Her voice was very strange.
“Everett. There were three letters. Logged into the family office mail system. March twenty-ninth, April eighteenth, May ninth. Return address, Port Easton County Correctional. Addressed to you.” A pause. “All three were signed for and collected by Silas.”
My hand tightened on the phone.
“There’s more,” Dolores said. “You asked me last week about your mother’s bracelet. I pulled the family vault log. The bracelet was kept in the vault downtown unless your mother requested it. On the morning of that dinner, it was checked out. Not by your mother.” Another pause. “By Silas. Two hours before the party.”
The room spun.
“And Everett,” Dolores said quietly. “One more thing. The anonymous call to Children’s Services yesterday? Rachel Diaz is my niece’s friend. I asked. The call came from a phone number registered to Thorne Holdings. Extension 4410.”
I knew that extension.
It was my brother’s assistant’s desk.
That night, I drove to my mother’s house.
She was alone in the library with a glass of wine she hadn’t touched. She looked older than I’d ever seen her.
I laid Dolores’s printouts on the table in front of her without a word. The mail log. The vault log. The phone record.
She read them. Then she read them again. Then she set them down very carefully, as if they might break.
“The bracelet,” she said. “He offered to bring it from the vault that afternoon. He said he was going downtown anyway. I thought it was sweet.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I thanked him.”
“I know, Mom.”
“I called the police on that girl. In front of everyone. I sat in court and watched her plead guilty.” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Everett. She was carrying my grandchildren.”
I sat at my kitchen table in stunned silence. Then, piece by piece, it all came together.
Our grandfather, Augustus Thorne, had told Silas and me the same thing every Christmas since we were teenagers. I built this company for my family. When I choose who runs it, I’ll choose the grandson who builds one.
Seven years ago, I’d been about to propose. Silas must have found out Maren was pregnant. The ultrasound in her purse, maybe. If I married her and gave Grandfather great-grandchildren, the chair would be mine.
So my brother had taken our mother’s bracelet out of the vault, slipped it into Maren’s purse at that dinner, and “found” it in front of everyone. He’d let our own mother call the police. He’d forged a goodbye note. He’d collected every letter Maren sent me from jail and made sure I never saw a word.
And then he’d spent seven years playing the loyal, supportive little brother, steering me toward a woman I didn’t love, until Grandfather was ready to name his heir.
And now, with that announcement only weeks away, four little girls with my eyes had walked out of a restaurant restroom and ruined everything.
Let me handle the DNA test, he’d said. I know a lab.
The independent clinic called me that night.
“Mr. Thorne, this is unusual, but I felt you should know. Yesterday, a man came in claiming to be your representative and asked to ‘review’ your daughters’ samples before the final report was filed. He said there’d been a mix-up and offered to bring in replacement swabs. We refused, of course. We have his name on our visitor log.”
“Silas Thorne,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
I hung up and looked through the bedroom doorway at four little girls asleep in four little beds.
My brother hadn’t just stolen seven years.
He’d just tried to steal them again.
CHAPTER 5: THE NINETIETH BIRTHDAY
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