Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Silver SUV
For several seconds, I could not speak.
Cars moved through the intersection behind us. People hurried past carrying coffee and briefcases. Somewhere nearby, a bus released its brakes with a loud hiss.
But all I could hear was Rachel’s final sentence.
“She was wearing your mother’s wedding ring.”
“That’s impossible,” I said.
“I know what I saw.”
“No, you don’t.”
Rachel flinched.
I immediately regretted my tone.
My mother’s wedding ring was not an ordinary gold band. It had a small emerald set between two diamonds, designed by my grandmother and passed down to Mom. After the accident, Dad told me the ring had been damaged and lost at the scene.
He had searched for it for weeks.
At least, that was what I remembered.
“Describe it,” I said.
Rachel did.
Every detail was correct.
The oval emerald.
The two small diamonds.
The thin engraving along the band.
I had shown Rachel photographs of the ring years earlier, but not recently. She could have remembered it.
Still, I did not believe she was mistaken.
“What exactly did the woman say?”
Rachel glanced toward the glass doors of her office building.
“I cannot be late for work.”
“You disappeared for more than a day.”
“I know.”
“Then work can wait.”
She closed her eyes briefly.
“Fine. There’s a café around the corner.”
We took a table at the back. Rachel sat facing the entrance, her shoulders rigid.
“She was standing beside my car when I arrived home,” she began. “At first, I assumed she lived in the building. Then she called me by name.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked whether I had enjoyed dinner with Daniel.”
“Did she identify herself?”
“No. I asked who she was, and she said that wasn’t important.”
Rachel wrapped both hands around her coffee cup, though she had not taken a sip.
“She knew everything about me, Emily. She knew my mother was receiving treatment at St. Joseph’s. She knew my brother was fighting for joint custody. She even knew I had met with an attorney last month about becoming my mother’s medical power of attorney.”
“None of that gives her power over you.”
“She claimed she had documents that could damage my brother’s custody case.”
“Did she show you?”
“She showed me photographs of him leaving a bar.”
“Your brother is allowed to visit a bar.”
“Not when the photographs make it look like he drove afterward.”
“Did he?”
“No. I picked him up. But the pictures were cropped.”
The woman had not simply frightened Rachel with vague threats. She had prepared leverage.
“What did she say about Dad?”
“That he destroys women. That your mother discovered the truth and tried to leave him.”
I shook my head.
“That’s a lie.”
“She said the accident wasn’t an accident.”
“Stop.”
“I’m telling you what she said.”
“My father loved my mother.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know the way I do.”
Rachel leaned forward.
“Then why does someone have a photograph of the crash? Why does she have the ring your father said disappeared? Why has every woman he dated been threatened into silence?”
I stood so abruptly that the table shook.
A few customers turned toward us.
Rachel lowered her voice.
“Sit down.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“That could be exactly what this woman wants.”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
“Find out who she is first.”
I sat again, forcing myself to breathe.
“Did she follow you into your apartment?”
“No. She made me unlock my phone and delete your messages.”
“Why did you disappear?”
“She warned that if I contacted you or Daniel, she would send the photographs to my brother’s ex-wife. I panicked. I left my phone at home and stayed at a hotel.”
“And then?”
“I realized she would keep controlling me unless I told you. So I sent the message she demanded, waited a day, and called you from a borrowed phone.”
“Did you report her?”
“She said she would know.”
“She’s bluffing.”
“Maybe. But she knew things that weren’t public.”
I pulled out my phone.
“I’m calling the police.”
Rachel grabbed my wrist.
“Tell them what? That an unidentified woman wore a ring and threatened to distribute misleading but legal photographs?”
“Harassment. Stalking. Extortion.”
“With no recording and no witnesses?”
“We have the messages.”
“From an untraceable number.”
Frustration burned through me.
“So we do nothing?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Rachel looked around the café, then lowered her voice further.
“The woman made one mistake.”
“What?”
“She arrived in a silver SUV. When she opened the back door to take out the folder of photographs, I saw a parking permit hanging from the mirror.”
“For where?”
“Mercy Hills.”
I knew the name.
Mercy Hills was a private assisted-living community on the north side of town.
“Did you see the number?”
“Building C. Space forty-two.”
That was enough.
I called in sick to work and drove to Mercy Hills.
Rachel refused to come with me, which was probably wise. She had already taken the greatest risk.
Mercy Hills consisted of six brick buildings surrounding landscaped courtyards. At the entrance, a security guard asked who I was visiting.
I invented a name.
There was no resident by that name.
I apologized and drove away, then parked at a shopping center across the street.
For the next two hours, I watched vehicles entering and leaving.
At eleven forty, a silver SUV turned into the driveway.
I followed from a distance.
The driver parked in space forty-two beside Building C.
A tall woman stepped out.
Gray-blond hair.
Dark coat.
I could not see her face clearly, but my heart started pounding.
She entered the building.
I waited ten minutes before following.
The lobby had a seating area, a reception desk, and a directory listing residents by first initial and last name.
I scanned the names.
One stopped me.
V. Mercer — 314
Mercer was my mother’s maiden name.
My aunt Vivian Mercer lived in a house across town, not an assisted-living facility. But the initial and surname could not be coincidence.
I took the elevator to the third floor.
Apartment 314 stood at the end of a quiet hallway.
I heard voices inside.
One belonged to the gray-haired woman.
The other was weak and elderly.
I leaned closer.
“You promised he would never date again,” the older voice said.
“I’m handling it.”
“Six women.”
“Seven now.”
My blood turned cold.
“She’s his daughter’s friend,” the elderly woman continued. “Emily will notice.”
“She already has.”
“You cannot frighten her the way you frightened the others.”
“I don’t need to. She still trusts Daniel.”
The woman laughed softly.
“That trust won’t survive much longer.”
I reached for my phone, intending to record, but the apartment door suddenly opened.
The gray-haired woman stood inches away.
For one frozen second, we stared at each other.
She looked familiar.
Not because I had met her.
Because her eyes resembled my mother’s.
She wore the emerald ring on her left hand.
“Emily,” she said.
She was not surprised to see me.
“You knew I was coming.”
“I expected you eventually.”
“Who are you?”
Behind her, an elderly woman sat in a wheelchair near the window. Her thin white hair framed a face I recognized from old family photographs.
My grandmother, Ruth Mercer.
My mother’s mother.
The woman my father told me had died nine years ago.
Grandmother Ruth looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“Emily,” she whispered. “You’re so grown.”
I stumbled backward.
“No.”
My grandmother had moved to Arizona after Mom’s death. We exchanged birthday cards for two years. Then Dad said she had suffered a stroke and died.
I had mourned her.
Yet she was sitting ten feet away.
Alive.
The gray-haired woman stepped aside.
“You should come in.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Lydia Shaw.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“It should.”
Lydia lifted her chin.
“I was in the other car the night your mother died.”
The hallway seemed to narrow.
“The truck hit her.”
“No,” Lydia said. “That was the story Daniel told you.”
My hands began trembling.
“What really happened?”
Grandmother Ruth started crying.
Lydia opened the door wider.
“Come inside, Emily. It is time you learned what your father did.”
Every instinct told me not to enter.
But for twelve years, my family’s history had been built on information chosen by other people.
I stepped into the apartment.
May you like
Lydia locked the door behind me.
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