For two decades, I mourned my missing wife and daughters, until my son tore open a basement wall and found the chilling truth she hid from me.
“Look at her handwriting, Dad. That’s Mom’s.”
“Your brother found a disc,” I whispered. “Your mother left it. The night before.”
Ethan’s face drained of color.
“A disc? Dad, do we even have anything that plays those anymore?”
“The old laptop in the closet upstairs. Go get it. Quickly.”
He bolted up the stairs. Adam stayed beside me, his shoulder pressed against mine like he did when he was a little boy afraid of thunder.
“Dad, what if it’s something bad?”
“Your mother left it. The night before.”
“Then we face it together.”
“Twenty years, Dad. Twenty years and she hid this here?”
“I don’t know, son. I don’t know anything anymore.”
Ethan returned with the laptop. My hands shook so badly I could barely slide the disc into the drive.
“Let me, Dad,” Ethan said gently. “Sit down. Please.”
I sat on an overturned crate. The screen flickered. Then Laura appeared, alive, breathing, her eyes red from crying.
“Then we face it together.”
“Oh my God,” Adam whispered. “Mom…”
“My loves,” she began, “it hurts me to say this, but you need to know the whole truth.”
I gripped the edge of the crate.
“If you’re watching this, something has gone wrong, or I haven’t come back yet. Please don’t be angry with me.”
“Come back?” Ethan breathed. “What does she mean, come back?”
“Shhh. Listen.”
“It hurts me to say this, but you need to know the whole truth.”
“Diane has been pressuring me for months,” Laura continued, her voice cracking. “About my mother’s inheritance. The land, the accounts, all of it. She says it should have been hers.”
“Aunt Diane?” Adam said. “Our Aunt Diane?”
“She threatened to take the girls from me. She said she’d tell the courts I was unstable. I begged her to stop.”
I felt the room tilt.
“That’s why she was always around,” I said hoarsely. “All those visits. I thought she was grieving with us.”
Laura looked directly into the camera.
