Chapter 2 - I Had Given That Key to Linda at the Funeral
I called 911 before I asked another question.
That was deliberate.
Four years earlier, I might have dragged the stranger out myself.
Fatherhood had taught me the difference between protecting a child and letting anger create a second emergency.
I moved Ellie onto the deck behind the locked sliding door.
Bruno stayed outside with me.
The man remained beneath the deck.
“Don’t move,” I told him.
He laughed weakly.
“You always were dramatic, Mark.”
My entire body went cold.
He knew my name.
Police arrived within minutes.
They pulled him into the daylight.
I recognized the face only from photographs.
Older now.
Gray along the beard.
But unmistakable.
His name was Raymond Cole.
Caroline’s biological father.
Ellie’s maternal grandfather.
A man Caroline had not spoken to during the final twelve years of her life.
I had been told he lived in Arizona.
More importantly, I had been told he did not know our address.
An officer removed the silver key from his hand.
The blue whale swung beneath it.
I could still picture Caroline tossing those keys onto our kitchen counter.
After she died from a sudden cerebral aneurysm two years earlier, I boxed most of her belongings because I could barely look at them.
Her mother Linda asked for the old house key.
“She carried it forever,” Linda said. “I’d like something small of hers.”
I gave it to her.
Now Raymond had it.
There was only one realistic way that happened.
May you like
Somebody had given it to him.
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