I could barely breathe.
“My mother spent three years grieving my father before cancer took her,” I said. “I dropped out of school. I became a paramedic because I couldn’t save him, so I thought maybe I could save someone else. And you knew?”
“I knew too late.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“No,” Margaret whispered. “It doesn’t.”
For a moment, I wanted to hate her. It would have been easier. Clean. Simple.
But grief had carved deep lines around her mouth. Whatever she had hidden had not spared her.
“Why tell me now?” I asked.
“Because Daniel is alive. Because someone sent me a message two weeks ago with only three words.”
She opened the prayer book again and handed me a small piece of paper.
I knew the handwriting before I knew why.
Block letters. Heavy pressure. Slight upward slant.
My father used to write grocery lists like that.
I read the message.
ASK NORA’S FATHER.
The chapel blurred.
“That’s impossible,” I said.
“I thought so too.”
“My father is dead.”
Margaret nodded. “So is my son.”
A cold, thin fear moved through me.
Before either of us could speak again, the chapel door opened.
Adrian stood there.
His gaze moved from his mother’s face to mine, then to the paper in my hand.
No one said anything.
He walked down the aisle slowly.
“Mother,” he said, and the softness in his voice was worse than anger. “What have you done?”
Margaret folded her hands in her lap. “What I should have done years ago.”
I stood. “Did you follow me?”
Adrian’s eyes did not leave the paper. “I followed her.”
“Of course you did,” Margaret murmured.
He reached for the note, but I pulled it back.
His gaze lifted to mine.
“Nora.”
“No,” I said. “This is about my father too.”
Something passed across his face. Respect, maybe. Or regret.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
I handed him the paper.
He read it once.
Then again.
For the first time since I had met him, Adrian Hargrove looked truly shaken.
“This isn’t Daniel’s handwriting,” he said.
“I know,” I whispered.
“How?”
I swallowed.
“Because it’s my father’s.”
The chapel air turned impossibly still.
Adrian stared at me. Margaret began to cry silently.
Then my phone buzzed in my coat pocket.
Unknown number.
I answered with trembling fingers.
At first, there was only static.
Then a man’s voice spoke.
Older. Hoarse. Familiar in a way that reached past memory and went straight into bone.
“Nora,” he said softly. “Don’t trust the Hargroves.”
My heart stopped.
Because the voice on the phone sounded exactly like my father.
END OF PART 2 – LIKE, SHARE AND COMMENT “”THE ENTIRE STORY”” IF YOU WANT TO READ THE FULL STORY.
