Chapter 16 16

Chapter 16 16
Chapter Sixteen
I didn't speak.

My father's breathing came through the phone, slow and deliberate, the same way he used to breathe when he was about to say something he'd already rehearsed.

Frederick was watching my face. I don't know what he saw there but something made him sit forward slightly.

"Charlotte," my father said again. "Are you there?"

"I'm here."

"Good." A pause. "You sound well."

I almost laughed. "What do you want?"

"To talk. That's all." His voice had changed. There was a frailty in it that hadn't been there before, something papery around the edges. Whether it was real or performed I couldn't tell yet. With my father those two things had always been difficult to separate. "I've missed you."

"You have four days until you're out," I said. "Why are you calling me now?"

A longer pause this time.

"Because what I need to say shouldn't wait until Monday."

I stood up and walked to the kitchen, putting some distance between myself and Frederick without really meaning to. I needed to think and I couldn't do that with him watching me.

"Say it then," I said.

"Not like this. Not on the phone." His voice dropped slightly. "I need to see you, Charlotte. In person. There's something you need to know. Something about your mother."

My hand tightened on the phone.

"Don't," I said quietly.

"I know how that sounds—"

"Don't use her. Don't you dare use her."

"I'm not using her." And something in his voice shifted then, just slightly, in a way that caught me off guard. It didn't sound rehearsed anymore. It sounded tired and old and genuinely afraid. "Charlotte, please. Just hear me out. What I have to tell you changes things. It changes everything."

The kitchen was very small and very quiet.

"I'll think about it," I said. And I ended the call before he could say anything else.

I stood at the kitchen sink and looked at the taps and breathed.

Frederick appeared in the doorway. He didn't come in. He just leaned against the frame and waited.

"He wants to meet," I said.

"I heard."

"He mentioned my mother."

A pause. "What about her?"

"He wouldn't say on the phone." I turned around and looked at him. "He said it changes everything."

Frederick's expression did something complicated. He looked away briefly, toward the window, and then back at me.

"Don't go," he said.

"You don't get to tell me—"

"I'm not telling you. I'm asking you." His voice was careful in a way that made me pay attention. "Just. Don't go. Not yet. Not until we know more."

"We." I looked at him. "Since when is any of this we?"

He didn't answer that.

"What do you know, Frederick?"

"Nothing that's certain."

"That's not an answer."

He pushed off the doorframe and came into the kitchen properly, which made the room feel considerably smaller. He stopped a few feet from me and looked at me directly.

"When I was building the case against your father," he said slowly, "my investigators found some things that weren't relevant to the financial crimes. Things I set aside because they didn't serve the prosecution." He paused. "I should have told you sooner."

My heart was doing something unsteady. "Tell me now."

"Your mother didn't die in childbirth, Charlotte."

The kitchen tilted slightly.

"What?"

"That's what your father told you. That's what's on record." His voice was even but his eyes were very serious. "My investigators found a second death certificate. Filed privately, through a different county. Different cause of death. Different date." He paused. "She was alive for at least three years after you were born."

I stared at him.

The coffee cup was still in my hand. I set it down on the counter because I didn't trust my grip.

"That's not possible," I said. "I grew up being told—"

"I know what you were told."

"He told me my whole life that she died having me. That I was the reason she—" I stopped. Put my hand flat on the counter. "Frederick."

"I know."

"Where has she been?"

"I don't know. The trail went cold. The investigators hit walls that looked deliberately placed." He kept his eyes on me. "Which means someone with money and connections made sure it stayed cold."

"My father."

"That would be my assumption."

I turned and faced the window above the sink. The rooftops. The flat grey sky. The ordinary world carrying on out there with no idea that the ground had just dropped out from under me entirely.

My mother.

I had carried her absence my whole life like a wound I'd been born with, something so old and deep that I'd stopped thinking of it as a wound at all. Just part of the shape of me. And now Frederick was standing in my kitchen telling me it had been a choice. Someone's deliberate choice.

"Why didn't you tell me?" My voice came out very quiet. "When your investigators found it. Why didn't you tell me then?"

"Because then I would have had to tell you everything else. About who I was and why I was there and what I was doing." A pause. "And I wasn't ready to lose you yet."

I closed my eyes.

That sentence landed in a place I wasn't prepared for. I felt it go in and I didn't have the energy to push it back out again.

"I need you to leave," I said.

"Charlotte—"

"Please." I opened my eyes and looked at the window. "I need you to go. I need to think and I can't do that with you here."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then I heard him move. Heard him pick up his coat. Heard his footsteps cross the main room.

At the door he stopped.

"Whatever he tells you on Monday," he said quietly, "whatever story he has about your mother. Make sure you hear my side before you decide anything."

I didn't answer.

The door closed.

I stood at the kitchen sink in the silence and Ashes jumped up onto the counter beside me and pushed his head against my arm and I held onto him and let the morning fall apart around me.

My mother had been alive.

And every single person who could have told me had chosen not to.