Chapter 6 - The Secret Beneath the Piano|
The police arrived just after midnight.
Two officers photographed Emily's bedroom while my parents waited downstairs.
I stood in the hallway beside my sister, listening to the camera shutters and trying to keep my anger under control.
My mother had given Paul Rainer a key to our house.
Not because he was family.
Not because Emily had asked her to.
But because he had promised to keep uncomfortable questions away from our perfect family.
Emily leaned against the wall.
"I can't believe she did that."
I looked at her.
"I can."
She turned toward me.
The hurt on her face made me regret my answer immediately.
"That sounded cruel," I admitted.
"No."
She shook her head.
"It sounded like someone who has been disappointed a lot longer than I have."
I didn't know what to say.
For years, Emily had been the one person in our family whose approval I wanted almost as badly as our parents'.
I loved her.
I had always loved her.
But loving someone didn't make it painless to stand in their shadow.
One of the officers approached.
"Ms. Whitlock, your sister mentioned a wooden keepsake box."
Emily nodded.
"It's missing photographs, letters, and some older paperwork."
"Do you have any idea why someone would want those items?"
She hesitated.
"Some of the papers concern a military incident."
The officer nodded and made a note.
"We'll document what's missing, and you can provide the relevant information to the investigators handling that matter."
When he left, Emily touched my arm.
"Megan, there's something I didn't tell General Ward."
I felt another knot tighten in my stomach.
"What?"
"I didn't keep the original radio-status note in that box."
I stared at her.
"The paper you showed him?"
"That was a copy I'd made when I was trying to organize my recollections."
"Where's the original?"
Emily glanced toward the staircase.
"In the safest place I could think of when I came home."
I followed her downstairs.
Our mother sat in the living room, crying quietly into a handkerchief.
Our father stood by the fireplace with his phone pressed to his ear.
When he saw us, he ended the call abruptly.
Emily ignored both of them.
She walked toward the old upright piano in the corner.
It had belonged to our grandmother.
As children, we had spent hours sitting beside it, pretending we were famous musicians.
My parents had always wanted Emily to play concert pieces.
I had preferred making up my own songs.
Dad used to say that was the difference between discipline and distraction.
Emily lifted the hinged top of the piano bench.
Inside were yellowing sheet-music books, family photographs, and a tin box decorated with blue flowers.
She opened the tin.
Beneath a stack of childhood recital programs lay a sealed plastic sleeve.
Inside it was the original handwritten radio-status note.
I stared at her.
"Why hide it here?"
She gave a small, sad smile.
"Because Mom never opens anything connected to our music lessons."
I remembered how our parents had stopped paying for my lessons after deciding Emily's competitive sports and leadership programs were more important.
It wasn't a memory I wanted to revisit.
Emily held up the sleeve.
"I was afraid someone would tell me to throw it away."
"Why didn't you give it to investigators earlier?"
"Because I was afraid it would be treated as official material I wasn't supposed to have kept."
She swallowed.
"And because keeping it meant admitting there was something wrong with the report."
I took a breath.
"Emily, explain exactly how you came to possess it, and let the investigators determine what it is."
She nodded.
"That's what I should have done from the beginning."
I called Colonel Brooks again.
She connected us with the assigned Army criminal investigator, Special Agent Naomi Ellis, who arranged to receive the note and record its provenance the following morning.
We placed it somewhere safe without altering it further.
Then the front door opened.
My father stepped into the living room, looking ten years older than he had at the party.
"Girls, I need you to understand that business decisions aren't always simple."
Emily turned toward him.
"Neither is losing a soldier."
He flinched.
"I never wanted anyone hurt."
"But you signed that equipment acceptance affidavit," I said.
"Yes."
"And received eighty-five thousand dollars."
He nodded slowly.
"For the firm's review."
"Did you know there were complaints about the relay?"
He looked at the carpet.
"I knew there had been questions about performance under certain conditions."
Emily's face collapsed.
"Dad."
Her voice was barely audible.
"Jonah died trying to help people when our communications failed."
Our father closed his eyes.
"I didn't know the consequences would be like that."
I studied him for a long moment.
"That's why you were supposed to verify the evidence before signing."
He looked at me with sudden anger.
"Do you enjoy judging your own father?"
"No."
My voice broke unexpectedly.
"You have no idea how much I wish I didn't have to ask these questions."
For a moment, the room was utterly silent.
Then my mother's phone rang.
She glanced at the screen and hurried toward the kitchen.
But I heard her whisper before she disappeared.
"Adrian, you promised nobody would get hurt by this."
Emily looked at me.
I looked back at her.
We had been concentrating so hard on our father's consulting business that neither of us had considered something else.
Our mother had spent the last three years running a charitable scholarship foundation for military families.
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Bastion Dynamics was one of its largest donors.
And suddenly, I wondered whether those donations had been charitable at all.
