Chapter 5 - My Mother Chose Him Again
Margaret’s car was found abandoned near a private marina.
Inside were Harold’s broken handcuffs, a bloodstained jacket, and Claire’s phone.
Claire was missing too.
Police initially feared Harold had taken both women.
Then surveillance footage from the marina showed the truth.
Margaret drove.
Claire sat in the passenger seat.
Harold climbed willingly into a waiting boat.
My mother had helped him escape.
Again.
Nathan advised me to remain under guard.
I refused to stay in the hospital.
I signed the discharge form and returned to the lakeside home with Ellison.
The living room had become a crime scene.
The bat was sealed in evidence plastic.
My blood still marked the rug.
Family photographs lined the wall as if none of them had witnessed anything.
Ellison stopped beneath the picture of my grandmother in uniform.
“My father used to talk about Eleanor Hart,” he said.
“What did he say?”
“That she was the only person in this county Harold feared.”
That explained why Grandmother protected evidence instead of confronting him publicly.
She understood that fear made Harold careful.
Exposure would make him reckless.
A deputy discovered that Claire’s phone had sent a message after the escape.
It went to Victor Dane.
North dock. Bring the original file.
The original file could refer to the Raven Lake engineering report, the maritime payment, or something else.
We searched the house.
In my grandmother’s bedroom, behind a wardrobe, I found another photograph.
It showed Eleanor, Victor Dane, and Harold standing beside a Hart Construction barge fifteen years earlier.
Victor had worked for my father long before my Navy attack.
On the back, Grandmother had written:
Victor does what Harold cannot admit he wants done.
Nathan traced the barge.
It had sunk in deep water near the Hart quarry.
Official records called it an equipment accident.
No salvage attempt was ever made.
Then my phone rang.
Claire.
Her voice shook.
“Evelyn, Dad is going to kill Mom.”
“Where are you?”
“On the old quarry road.”
“Why did you help him?”
“I thought he would sign the company to me and leave the country.”
“You helped a man who beat me.”
“You were always going to survive.”
The sentence was almost identical to something Margaret had once told me after my Navy injury.
You were always the strong one.
In our family, strength had become permission to hurt me.
“Get away from him,” I said.
“I can’t.”
A man’s voice sounded behind her.
Victor.
Then Claire whispered:
May you like
“He knows Grandma hid something on the sunken barge.”
The call ended.
