Chapter 261
Lance
The smile vanished from Thomas's face so quickly it might never have existed. For just an instant, something else flickered in his eyes—calculation, maybe, or the first hint of genuine concern. Then it was gone, replaced by studied boredom.
Diana pulled several pages from the pile, handling them with the careful precision of a surgeon selecting instruments. "Let's establish the basic timeline, since some details seem to have gotten... fuzzy over the years."
She glanced around the semicircle, making sure she had everyone's attention.
"Thirty years ago, on the evening of March fourteenth, Grace Briar learned that Lance's father, Evander Lawson, had agreed to an arranged marriage with Eleanor Lloyd. Grace was understandably distraught. The next morning, March fifteenth, she had breakfast at her parents' home in Brooklyn Heights, then left sometime around nine AM. She drove toward Saint's Bay, taking the coastal road. But she never made it to her destination."
Diana's finger traced a route on one of the documents. "On the western approach to Saint's Bay, at a particularly sharp curve overlooking the water, Grace's car went off the road. The vehicle plunged into the bay. By the time emergency services arrived, she was already gone. The official determination was accidental death—loss of control on a slick road surface, compounded by emotional distress."
The silence that followed was suffocating. I'd heard this story before, of course. Had it burned into my memory through years of whispered conversations and pitying looks. But hearing it laid out so clinically, with my mother reduced to a timeline and a traffic accident, made something crack open inside my chest.
Arthur's breathing had gone ragged. Eleanor stared straight ahead, her face a mask of controlled pain. Even Thomas had the decency to look uncomfortable, though whether from genuine emotion or simple annoyance at the delay, I couldn't tell.
"Is there a point to this recap?" Thomas drawled. "Because I'm fairly certain everyone here knows how the story ends. Why don't you spare us all the theatrical buildup and—"
"I'm getting to it." Diana's smile was sharp enough to draw blood. "But since you're so eager to move things along, let me skip ahead to the interesting part. The part that wasn't in the official report."
She pulled out another document, this one marked with evidence tags and dated thirty years ago. "According to testimony given by Grace's mother—Lance's grandmother—Grace received a phone call that morning. Right before she left the house. Mrs. Briar stated that Grace seemed agitated after the call, more so than she'd been the previous evening. But she got in her car and drove away anyway."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. I felt it in the sudden stillness, the way everyone leaned forward almost imperceptibly. Even Thomas's mask of indifference cracked slightly, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
Diana continued, her voice taking on an edge I'd never heard before. "The investigating officer, Detective James Calloway, noted this testimony in his initial report. But he never followed up on it. Never tried to trace the call. Never even mentioned it to the Lawson family. Instead, he emphasized Grace's emotional state, suggested she'd been driving recklessly, and closed the case as an unfortunate accident."
My hands were shaking. I gripped the armrest harder, trying to channel the fury building in my chest into something other than violence. "Calloway," I bit out, the name tasting like poison. "That fucking—"
I turned to stare at Thomas, really seeing him now. The slight tension in his shoulders that he couldn't quite hide. The way his eyes had gone flat and calculating.
"Tell me something, Uncle." The word dripped with contempt. "Who do you think made that call?"
Thomas met my gaze without flinching, but I caught the brief flicker of something in his expression—worry, maybe, or calculation. Then he shrugged, settling back into his chair with forced nonchalance.
"Phone records from thirty years ago?" He laughed, the sound hollow. "Good luck with that, nephew. I'm sure we'd all love to know who called your mother that morning. Would certainly add an interesting twist to the story. But I'm afraid you're chasing ghosts. That information is long gone, buried under three decades of technological advancement and corporate record purging."
His smile returned, sharper this time. "So while I appreciate the effort to turn this into some kind of dramatic revelation, I suspect this whole investigation is going to end exactly where it started—nowhere. A tragedy, certainly. But a tragedy without answers."
The certainty in his voice made my stomach clench. He was right, wasn't he? Thirty years was an eternity in terms of evidence preservation. Phone companies didn't keep records that long. Even if they had, the technology had changed so completely that—
"What if I told you," Diana said softly, her words dropping into the silence like stones into still water, "that I found the number?"
Thomas froze.