Chapter 4 - TEN MISSING MINUTESClaire called back eleven minutes later.
Those eleven minutes felt longer than the previous twenty-three years.
When my phone rang again, I stepped into an empty consultation room.
Ethan followed.
My mother was too weak to leave the bed, so we put Claire on speaker.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said.
“Don’t apologize. Talk.”
There was a long pause.
Then she began.
The night Lily died, Claire had attended a graduation party at a cabin near Lake Harlow.
Daniel and Lily arrived together.
Daniel was already angry.
According to Claire, Lily had decided to end their relationship.
That explained the hummingbird charm.
Claire had given it to Lily as a promise.
“If you decide to leave him,” Claire said, “call me. No matter what time.”
The hummingbird represented freedom.
Movement.
The ability to fly backward without losing the ability to move forward.
Lily had loved the symbolism.
“She wore it because she had decided.”
“To leave Daniel?”
“Yes.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
Claire continued.
Daniel discovered the plan at the party.
He drank.
They argued.
Claire offered to drive Lily home.
Daniel refused to give up the keys.
Eventually all three got into his car.
“That was stupid,” Claire whispered. “I have replayed that decision every night of my life.”
The argument continued while Daniel drove.
Claire told him to stop.
Lily threatened to call the police.
Daniel pulled toward the shoulder.
Then Lily reached across him.
Not for the wheel.
For the keys.
Daniel jerked his arm away.
The car veered.
They hit the guardrail at approximately forty miles per hour.
“The airbags went off,” Claire said. “Everything was smoke and glass.”
Claire’s head was bleeding.
Daniel’s shoulder was injured.
Lily was trapped in the passenger seat.
“But she was alive?”
“Yes.”
Claire remembered Lily saying her name.
Remembered Lily asking whether Daniel was okay.
Remembered blood along Lily’s hairline.
“But she was talking normally.”
“What happened next?”
Daniel tried to call 911.
There was almost no signal.
Claire climbed from the backseat and walked toward the road.
Then headlights appeared.
A black sedan.
Claire recognized it immediately.
Her father’s car.
“Why was Judge Beaumont there?”
“He had been looking for me.”
“How did he know where you were?”
“I called him from the party.”
Daniel had frightened her.
She wanted her father to collect her.
But she never told him they had left.
Judge Beaumont found them anyway.
He pulled over about fifty yards behind the wreck.
Claire ran toward him.
“I thought we were saved.”
Her voice cracked.
“Instead, he looked at me and asked whether I had been drinking.”
I felt sick.
He wasn’t asking about Lily.
He was calculating consequences.
Claire admitted she had two drinks.
Her father became furious.
Then he noticed Daniel stumbling beside the wreck.
He recognized Daniel as the son of one of his political donors.
“He started talking about reputations.”
Even then.
Even with Lily trapped inside a wrecked vehicle.
Judge Beaumont was thinking about reputation.
“Did he call an ambulance?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He wanted to move Daniel away from the driver’s side before police arrived.”
Ethan stood up.
“He tampered with the scene?”
“Yes.”
Claire said she screamed at him to help Lily first.
The judge told her Lily would be fine.
He ordered Daniel into his car.
Daniel refused.
Then something happened that Claire had spent decades trying to forget.
Lily managed to unfasten her seat belt.
She pushed the passenger door partially open.
She was trying to climb out.
Claire ran toward her.
Her father shouted.
Then he reversed his sedan.
“He was trying to reposition it.”
Claire’s breathing became ragged.
“The road curved. It was dark.”
I knew what was coming before she said it.
“He hit Lily’s door.”
The sedan slammed into the partially open passenger door.
The metal folded inward.
Lily was crushed between the door and the frame.
Claire screamed.
Daniel ran toward the car.
Judge Beaumont got out.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Lily stopped breathing.
I slid into a chair.
Ethan covered his face.
“My father killed her,” Claire whispered.
Not Daniel.
Judge Beaumont.
A man who had been dead for twelve years.
“Why did the report say Lily was driving?”
“Because my father panicked.”
He called Sheriff Milton, an old friend.
By the time emergency services arrived, Judge Beaumont had created a story.
Lily had been driving.
Daniel and Claire were bystanders who arrived afterward.
The sedan had never struck anything.
“He forced you to lie?”
“Yes.”
“And Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“Why would Daniel agree?”
“Because he was drunk. Because he believed he caused the first crash. Because my father told him if the truth came out, he would go to prison.”
Ethan whispered, “He should have told someone.”
“Yes,” Claire said.
“He was eighteen.”
“So was Lily.”
Claire went quiet.
“You’re right.”
That mattered.
No excuses.
No rewriting.
Daniel had been young and afraid.
But Lily had been young too.
And she didn’t get twenty-three additional years to regret anything.
“Why didn’t you tell the truth later?”
“I tried once.”
“When?”
“Eleven years ago.”
That was approximately when my father began getting sick.
“I contacted your father.”
My breath caught.
“What?”
“We met.”
“Where?”
“A diner outside Dayton.”
“What did he say?”
“He believed me.”
My father had known.
Before he died, he had known.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he wanted proof first.”
“What proof?”
Claire paused.
“My father kept something.”
“What?”
“The original accident photographs.”
According to Claire, Judge Beaumont had instructed Sheriff Milton to destroy several photographs.
Instead, he kept copies.
Why?
Insurance.
Protection.
Blackmail.
Claire never knew.
After Judge Beaumont’s death, she searched his home.
She found nothing.
But my father believed another person knew where the photographs had gone.
“Who?”
“Daniel.”
Ethan looked at me.
“Dad?”
Claire continued.
“Your father confronted him.”
“When?”
“About ten years ago.”
The timing mattered.
Ten years ago was when Daniel changed.
More secretive.
More irritable.
Within three years, our marriage was falling apart.
“Did Daniel have the photographs?”
“I don’t know.”
The door to the consultation room suddenly opened.
A man stood there.
Daniel.
His hair was grayer than when we divorced.
His face was pale.
He had obviously heard enough.
Ethan stood.
For several seconds, father and son stared at each other.
Daniel looked at the red dress.
Then the phone.
“Is that Claire?”
Nobody answered.
Claire heard his voice.
“Daniel.”
His expression collapsed.
Twenty-three years disappeared from his face.
For the first time, I saw the eighteen-year-old boy buried inside him.
“Claire.”
“You need to tell them.”
Daniel’s eyes filled with tears.
“I know.”
“Everything.”
He nodded.
Claire disconnected.
Daniel closed the door.
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“You knew Aunt Lily.”
“Yes.”
“You lied to Mom.”
“Yes.”
“You let everyone think she caused the crash.”
Daniel looked at the floor.
“Yes.”
Then Ethan asked the question I couldn’t.
“Did you marry my mother because you felt guilty?”
Daniel looked at me.
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you tell her?”
“Because I was a coward.”
No excuses.
No softening.
Just that.
A coward.
He reached into his jacket and removed a small brass key.
He placed it on the table.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A storage box.”
“Where?”
“First National Bank.”
“What’s inside?”
Daniel looked at the red dress again.
“Everything your father found before he died.”
I stared at the key.
“The photographs?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“A recording.”
Ethan whispered, “Of what?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Judge Beaumont confessing.”
The room went silent.
“You’ve had that for ten years?”
“Yes.”
Anger rose so violently in me that I almost couldn’t speak.
“You had proof?”
“I had something that could destroy Claire’s family.”
“And protect Lily’s name.”
“I know.”
“You had ten years.”
“I know.”
“My father died thinking—”
“No.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Your father gave it to me.”
That stopped me.
“What?”
“He didn’t want you to have it.”
“Why?”
“He made me promise.”
I stared at Daniel.
“What promise?”
Daniel pulled out another envelope.
This one was old.
Yellowed.
My father’s handwriting covered the front.
Sarah — only if the red dress ever comes back.
My knees nearly gave out.
The same phrase.
The red dress.
Everything had been designed around this moment.
Mom.
Dad.
Daniel.
Maybe even Lily.
“Why?” I whispered.
Daniel looked at Ethan.
“Because your father believed the truth should only come out if the next generation was brave enough to face it.”
Ethan stared at him.
“That makes no sense.”
Daniel nodded.
“You’re right.”
He slid the envelope toward me.
“It was another excuse for all of us to stay silent.”
May you like
Then he looked directly at his son.
“And you ended that excuse today.”
Related Stories
