Chapter 14 - THE NIGHT EMILY DIED
“I was at St. Catherine's.”
Nathan couldn't look at me.
Emily died at 2:16 in the morning.
I had been beside her.
Nathan had told me he arrived at the hospital around three.
That wasn't true.
“I got there before midnight,” he said.
“Why did you lie?”
“Because I wasn't there for you.”
He had been dating a respiratory therapist named Megan Cole.
Megan worked at St. Catherine's.
Their relationship ended badly.
Nathan had gone there that night trying to talk to her.
While waiting near a staff entrance, he saw Vanessa.
Years before Vanessa and I supposedly met.
“What was she doing?”
“Talking to a man in scrubs.”
“Martin?”
“No.”
Nathan shook his head.
“I didn't know Martin then, but I've seen him now. It wasn't him.”
“Charles?”
“No.”
A fourth person.
I felt the old temptation to turn every unknown into a conspiracy.
Rachel stopped me.
“Seeing Vanessa at a hospital is significant, but we don't know why she was there.”
Nathan continued.
He had recognized Vanessa months later when she approached him at the charity event.
She told him she'd been visiting a sick aunt that night.
He believed her.
Then she flirted with him.
Then she met me.
“And you never told me?”
“I thought the hospital connection was coincidence.”
“After everything else?”
His voice broke.
“I was ashamed about Megan. Then ashamed about Vanessa. Every time I waited, telling you became harder.”
I wanted him gone.
I actually opened the door.
Then Sophie toddled unsteadily from the living room toward us, supervised by my mother.
Nathan looked at her and stepped back.
“I'll leave.”
I let him.
That was my mistake.
Not because Nathan was innocent of everything.
Because isolation was exactly what Vanessa wanted.
Within an hour, a reporter called my company asking whether my brother was involved in “financial irregularities and an inappropriate relationship” with my wife.
Vanessa's camp had leaked the garage story.
By evening, Nathan stopped answering.
His apartment was empty.
His car was gone.
For one terrifying hour, I thought something had happened to him.
Then he sent Rachel a message.
I'M SAFE. I NEED TO FIX WHAT I HID.
Attached was a photograph.
An old hospital visitor badge.
Behind it, written in Nathan's handwriting from the night Emily died, was a license plate.
He had written it down because the vehicle had blocked Megan's car.
Rachel ran the plate through lawful investigative channels.
The vehicle had belonged to Charles Voss.
Vanessa hadn't been alone at St. Catherine's.
Charles had been there too.
But the hospital records still showed no evidence they harmed Emily.
Whatever they were doing that night, we had been asking the wrong question.
It wasn't how Emily died.
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It was why Vanessa and Charles were watching my family before she did.
📖 The hospital connection finally had a witness and a vehicle, but Charles's explanation would reveal that Emily—not I—had first discovered their financial scheme. 👇
