PART 2
Mrs. Voss did not answer immediately.
She stared at the narrow blue door as though something on the other side had heard my question.
Then she pushed herself up from the kitchen chair.
“Bring me my cane.”
I handed it to her, but when she tried to take a step, her knees trembled.
“You should rest.”
“I have rested for twenty-two years,” she said. “That is long enough.”
She moved slowly down the hallway, one hand gripping the cane and the other sliding along the wall. I followed close behind her, afraid she might fall.
When we reached the blue door, she removed a thin silver chain from beneath her nightgown.
A small brass key hung from it.
“You’ve had the key this entire time?”
“The key was never the problem.”
She inserted it into the lock.
Her hand shook so badly that the metal scraped against the keyhole three times before it finally went in.
The lock opened with a quiet click.
Mrs. Voss closed her eyes.
“Whatever you see in here,” she whispered, “please remember that I was a coward before I became an old woman.”
Then she opened the door.
Dust drifted through a narrow stripe of light.
The room was small, but it was not being used for storage.
It was a bedroom.
A single bed stood beneath the window, covered with a dark blue blanket. Books filled two shelves. A baseball glove rested on top of a wooden dresser, and a faded college sweatshirt hung from the back of a chair.
Nothing had been packed away.
Nothing had been changed.
It looked as though the person who belonged there had stepped outside one afternoon and never returned.
Mrs. Voss remained in the doorway.
“This was Lucan’s room.”
I walked toward the dresser.
Several photographs had been arranged beside a cracked wooden jewelry box. In the first picture, Lucan appeared to be sixteen. In the second, he was standing beside his father inside a printing shop.
The third photograph made me stop breathing.
Lucan was sitting on the hood of a red car with one arm around a young woman.
The woman was laughing at the camera. Her dark hair blew across her face, and she wore a silver heart-shaped necklace.
I knew that necklace.
It was inside my apartment, wrapped in tissue paper at the bottom of my duffel bag.
It had belonged to my mother.
I picked up the photograph.
“No,” I whispered.
Mrs. Voss began crying before I turned around.
“That woman is my mother.”
“Yes.”
“You knew her?”
“Yes.”
My fingers tightened around the frame.
“Why is she with your son?”
Mrs. Voss lowered herself onto the edge of the bed.
“Her name was Elise Hale. She began working at our printing shop when she was nineteen. Lucan was twenty-two.”
I stared at her.
“They fell in love almost immediately,” she continued. “Your grandfather disapproved. Not because Elise had done anything wrong, but because she had no money and no family name he considered useful.”
“My mother never mentioned Lucan.”
“She was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
Mrs. Voss looked toward the hallway, making certain we were alone.
“From my children.”
A cold sensation moved across my back.
“What are you saying?”
She pointed to a box beneath the bed.
I pulled it out.
Inside were dozens of envelopes tied together with blue ribbon. Some were addressed to Lucan. Others were addressed to Mrs. Odette Voss.
All of them had been opened.
I untied the ribbon and examined the first envelope.
The return address belonged to an apartment building in West Philadelphia.
I had lived in that same building with my mother until she died.
The handwriting on the envelope was hers.
I recognized the way she wrote the letter E, curling its middle line upward.
My knees weakened.
I sat on the floor.
Mrs. Voss watched me lift the letter from the envelope.
The paper had yellowed around its folded edges.
Odette,
I don’t know whether Lucan is alive. I don’t know what your other children told you, but I know he did not steal that money. He found something inside the company records, and he was frightened.
I stopped reading.
“What money?”
Mrs. Voss pressed both hands against the top of her cane.
“Three hundred thousand dollars disappeared from the printing company. Calder accused Lucan of taking it.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Lucan came to me the night before he disappeared.”
The room seemed to grow smaller.
“He said Calder and Bram had been creating false invoices through companies that did not exist. Sabine was using her position at the bank to move the money into private accounts.”
“Then why didn’t he go to the police?”
“He planned to. He had copied the company ledgers and hidden them somewhere. But before he could turn them over, the warehouse caught fire.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“What happened to Lucan?”
“His car was found behind the warehouse. There was blood on the driver’s seat, but no body was recovered.”
“You told me he was somewhere no one could visit.”
“I believed he was dead.”
“Believed?”
Mrs. Voss’s face changed.
“I was told he was dead.”
“By whom?”
She did not need to answer.
Sabine.
Calder.
Bram.
I looked down at my mother’s letter and continued reading.
Lucan told me that if anything happened, I should take the baby and leave Philadelphia. He made me promise not to contact anyone in the family until I knew who I could trust.
The baby.
My vision blurred.
I looked at the date above the letter.
It had been written five months before I was born.
My voice came out thin.
“Lucan was my father.”
Mrs. Voss nodded.
The room tilted beneath me.
I stood too quickly and struck my shoulder against the dresser.
“You knew.”
“I suspected the moment you replied to my advertisement.”
“You put that advertisement online to find me?”
“Yes.”
“You said you needed a cleaner.”
“I needed you to come voluntarily. I needed to meet you without my children knowing.”
“You could have messaged me.”
“What would I have said? Hello, Merrick. I may be your grandmother. My children may have destroyed your father’s life, and your mother spent years begging me to believe her?”
She covered her face.
“I was afraid you would disappear before I had the courage to explain.”
“So you watched me clean your house for seven months?”
“I watched you care for a stranger who had nothing to give you.”
Her words made me angrier.
“You owed me money.”
“I know.”
“You let me believe you had forgotten.”
“My children controlled my checking account. Every purchase appeared on a statement Sabine reviewed. If I paid you regularly, she would have asked questions.”
“You could have told me.”
“I should have.”
I placed the photograph back on the dresser.
“You should have told my mother.”
Mrs. Voss lowered her hands.
That sentence hurt her more than anything else I had said.
“Elise wrote to me for years,” she whispered.
“Then why didn’t you answer?”
“I never received the letters.”
“They’re beneath your bed.”
“I found them six years ago, after my husband died.”
She picked up one envelope.
“They had been hidden inside his locked desk. Sabine admitted that she intercepted the first letter. She told her father that Elise was demanding money and threatening the family.”
“Was she?”
“No.”
I read another line from the letter.
I don’t want money. I only want Merrick to know where he came from one day.
My mother had written my name before I was born.
The anger inside me broke into something heavier.
“She died without telling me.”
“She was probably still afraid.”
“She died when I was nine.”
“I know.”
The way Mrs. Voss said it made me look at her.
“How?”
She reached beneath her pillow and removed a folded newspaper clipping.
The article was short.
A twenty-nine-year-old woman named Elise Hale had died after being struck by a vehicle while crossing an intersection at night. The driver had left the scene.
The case had never been solved.
“You kept an article about my mother’s death?”
“I hired someone to find you after I discovered the letters.”
“Six years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you wait until now?”
“The investigator found your aunt first. She said you had moved, and she refused to give him your address. By the time he located you again, my children had taken control of my finances and begun monitoring my calls.”
I wanted to believe her.
That frightened me more than the possibility that she was lying.
“So this was all planned?”
“The advertisement was.”
“The twenty dollars?”
“I chose a small amount because Sabine would not believe anyone would become suspicious over it.”
“You were testing me.”
“At first.”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward, Thursdays became the only day of the week when I did not feel alone.”
Her voice broke.
I looked around Lucan’s preserved room.
For years, I had imagined that my father had simply chosen not to be part of my life. I had imagined a faceless man somewhere living comfortably without wondering whether I had enough food or a safe place to sleep.
Now I had a name.
A photograph.
And a family that had buried him before anyone found his body.
“Why did your children come here today?” I asked.
“The house.”
“Why are they desperate to sell it?”
Mrs. Voss looked toward the floorboards.
“Because Lucan hid the evidence somewhere inside it.”
I slowly turned toward her.
“The company ledgers?”
“He told me that the originals were safe. He said the truth would remain inside this house, even if he did not.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve had twenty-two years to look.”
“My husband searched first. Then Calder renovated several rooms. After that, Sabine began visiting without warning.”
She pointed toward the dresser.
“Lucan left one clue.”
Inside the top drawer, beneath a stack of neatly folded shirts, lay a small metal printing block.
It was the kind used in an old press to stamp letters onto paper.
A single word had been carved backward into its surface.
MERCY.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
I turned the metal block over.
Scratched into the bottom were three numbers.
4–17–9.
“Could it be a date?”
“Lucan disappeared on April seventeenth.”
“What about the nine?”
Mrs. Voss shook her head.
A car door slammed outside.
She grabbed my wrist.
“Close the drawer.”
I moved to the window.
The black SUV had returned.
This time, Sabine was alone.
She walked toward the porch while speaking on her phone.
Mrs. Voss stood so quickly that her cane fell.
“You cannot be in this room.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with her.”
“She must not know what I told you.”
“Why?”
“Because she has already begun the process of declaring me legally incompetent.”
The front door opened downstairs.
“Mother?” Sabine called. “I forgot my folder.”
Mrs. Voss shoved the metal printing block into my backpack.
“Take it.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Find out what Lucan wanted us to find.”
Footsteps entered the hallway.
Mrs. Voss closed the blue door just as Sabine appeared at the other end.
For one second, Sabine stared at us.
Then her gaze dropped to the brass key in her mother’s hand.
“What were you doing?”
Mrs. Voss straightened her shoulders.
“Showing Merrick where the spare blankets are.”
Sabine looked at the locked door.
“You haven’t opened that room in years.”
“I opened it today.”
“Why?”
“Because it is my house.”
Sabine’s face remained calm, but the muscles around her mouth tightened.
She turned toward me.
“Your work is finished.”
“I decide when he leaves,” Mrs. Voss said.
“No, Mother. That is exactly the problem. You no longer understand what is appropriate.”
Sabine removed a paper from her purse.
“A physician will visit on Monday. Calder and I have arranged an evaluation.”
“I will not see him.”
“If you refuse, the court will be informed.”
Mrs. Voss gripped my arm.
Sabine watched the movement.
Something in her expression changed.
It was recognition.
Not of my face, but of the shape of my hand where it rested against my backpack.
My curved little finger was visible.
Sabine became very still.
“What is your last name?” she asked.
Mrs. Voss stepped between us.
“He is leaving now.”
Sabine ignored her.
“What is your last name, Merrick?”
“Hale.”
The color vanished from her face.
She recovered quickly, but not quickly enough.
“Elise Hale?” she asked.
I did not answer.
Sabine moved closer.
“Who told you that name?”
“It’s my name.”
She looked at her mother.
“You found him.”
Mrs. Voss said nothing.
Sabine’s eyes filled with something darker than anger.
Fear.
She reached for my backpack.
I stepped backward.
“What is inside there?”
“Books.”
“Open it.”
“No.”
“This is my mother’s house.”
“And this is my bag.”
She turned toward Mrs. Voss.
“You have no idea what you are doing.”
“For the first time in twenty-two years,” Mrs. Voss replied, “I know exactly what I am doing.”
Sabine’s hand trembled at her side.
Then she smiled.
It was the same careful smile Calder had worn while placing the transfer papers on the table.
“Monday,” she said. “The doctor will be here at ten.”
She walked toward the front door.
Before leaving, she looked back at me.
“Elise should have stayed gone.”
The door closed behind her.
I followed Sabine onto the porch.
“What did you say?”
She continued toward the SUV.
I caught up with her near the sidewalk.
“What did you mean about my mother?”
Sabine unlocked the vehicle.
“She made choices.”
“She was killed by a driver who left her in the street.”
For the first time, Sabine’s composure cracked.
Her eyes moved toward the neighboring houses.
“Be careful, Merrick.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It is the advice your mother refused to take.”
She climbed into the SUV and drove away.
I stood in the road until the red taillights disappeared.
Mr. Givens, the elderly man who lived next door, was watching from behind his curtains.
When he realized I had seen him, he stepped away.
That night, I placed the metal printing block beneath my desk lamp.
MERCY.
4–17–9.
I searched old newspaper archives for the printing company. Voss Family Press had closed seventeen years earlier after a series of financial disputes.
One article mentioned the warehouse fire.
Another reported that Lucan Voss was wanted for questioning regarding missing company funds.
A third article, printed six months later, stated that he was presumed dead.
There were no photographs of a body.
No death certificate appeared in the public records I could access.
At two in the morning, I searched the numbers again.
Building addresses.
Bank codes.
Bible verses.
Nothing made sense.
Then I remembered the photographs covering Mrs. Voss’s walls.
Fourth child.
Seventeenth of April.
Nine years old.
My mother had died when I was nine.
I took the photograph of her from my wallet.
On the back, written in faded blue ink, were words I had never paid attention to.
For Merrick, when he is old enough to know.
Below the sentence were three tiny symbols.
A four.
A seventeen.
A nine.
My hands began shaking.
The next Thursday, I returned to Mrs. Voss’s house an hour early.
The front door was unlocked.
“Merrick?” she called from the kitchen.
She was sitting at the table with a bruise spreading across her left cheek.
“What happened?”
“I fell.”
“Who was here?”
“No one.”
“Mrs. Voss.”
She looked away.
There were papers scattered across the table. One was an application for emergency guardianship. Another authorized Sabine to place her in an assisted-living facility.
“Did Sabine do this?”
“She did not strike me.”
“Then who did?”
Mrs. Voss pressed a hand against her cheek.
“Bram became angry.”
I reached for my phone.
“I’m calling the police.”
“No.”
“He hit you.”
“If you call them, they will use my confusion against me. They will say I attacked him first.”
“Did you?”
“I threw a teacup.”
“Good.”
Despite everything, she almost smiled.
Then her eyes dropped to my backpack.
“Did you discover anything?”
I showed her the writing on the back of my mother’s photograph.
Mrs. Voss examined it.
“I have seen these numbers before.”
“Where?”
She stood and walked toward the living room.
Above the fireplace hung a family photograph taken outside the printing shop. Lucan stood on the far right.
Mrs. Voss removed the frame from the wall and opened the backing.
A second photograph had been hidden behind the first.
It showed my mother standing beside an old printing press.
A handwritten message appeared beneath her feet.
Mercy is not forgiveness. Mercy is the name of the machine.
Mrs. Voss looked at me.
“The press.”
“What press?”
“The first machine my husband purchased for the business. Lucan named it Mercy because it broke down every week and he said it was always begging not to be destroyed.”
“Where is it now?”
“When the warehouse closed, Calder sold the equipment.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Mr. Givens knocked on the front window.
He entered without waiting for permission.
His coat was unbuttoned, and he held a cardboard box against his chest.
“I heard you mention the press,” he said.
Mrs. Voss stared at him.
“How long were you listening?”
“Long enough.”
He placed the box on the table.
“I worked at Voss Family Press for thirty-one years.”
“You never told me,” I said.
“You never asked.”
He removed an old employee photograph from the box.
A group of workers stood beside a massive black printing press.
The word MERCY had been painted across its side.
“Calder did not sell it,” Mr. Givens said. “He moved it.”
“Where?”
“To the basement beneath the original storefront.”
“The building on Walnut Street was demolished,” Mrs. Voss said.
“The storefront was. The basement remained. A parking garage was built above it.”
I looked at the numbers again.
“Four, seventeen, nine.”
Mr. Givens nodded.
“Fourth row. Space seventeen. Level nine.”
“A parking space?”
“There is no level nine.”
“Then what does the nine mean?”
Mr. Givens reached into the box and removed an old brass employee badge.
The number stamped on its surface was nine.
“Lucan’s employee number.”
We went that night.
Mrs. Voss insisted on coming, but she could barely climb the stairs, so Mr. Givens stayed with her while I took the bus downtown.
The parking garage stood on the site of the old printing shop. It had four underground levels, each filled with concrete pillars and fluorescent lights.
On level four, parking space seventeen was empty.
A steel utility door stood directly behind it.
The number nine had been scratched beside the handle.
The brass badge slid into a narrow opening beneath the lock.
The door opened.
A staircase descended into darkness.
I used my phone as a flashlight.
At the bottom, I found a basement filled with broken shelving, rusted tools, and stacks of rotting paper.
Mercy stood in the center.
The printing press was covered with a gray tarp.
I pulled it away.
The machine was enormous.
I searched beneath it, behind it, and inside every drawer. Dust covered my clothes and filled my throat.
After forty minutes, I found nothing.
Then I noticed that one metal plate was newer than the rest.
Four bolts held it in place.
I used a rusted wrench from the floor to remove them.
Behind the plate was a narrow compartment.
Inside lay a waterproof document pouch.
I opened it.
There were bank statements, company ledgers, copies of checks, and signed transfer orders.
Sabine’s name appeared on nearly every page.
Calder’s appeared on the false invoices.
Bram had signed the warehouse insurance policy three days before the fire.
At the bottom of the pouch was a small cassette tape.
A handwritten label covered its front.
For my mother—and for my child.
My heart pounded.
I returned to Mrs. Voss’s house after midnight.
Mr. Givens found an old cassette player in his garage. We placed it on the kitchen table.
Mrs. Voss sat beside me while I inserted the tape.
Static filled the room.
Then a man’s voice began speaking.
“Mother, if you are hearing this, something happened before I could return.”
Mrs. Voss covered her mouth.
Lucan.
My father.
“I did not take the money. Calder and Bram have been stealing from the company for three years. Sabine helped move it through accounts belonging to dead customers.”
The tape crackled.
“I copied everything. The originals are inside Mercy.”
Mrs. Voss squeezed my hand.
Then Lucan said something that made the room go completely still.
“Elise is pregnant. The child is mine.”
My lungs tightened.
“I wanted to tell you, Mother. I wanted to bring her home. But Father said he would destroy her life if I embarrassed the family.”
There was a pause.
“If my child ever hears this, I need him to know I did not leave willingly.”
Mrs. Voss began sobbing.
“I was followed tonight. I believe Bram knows about the records. I am going to the police, but first I am taking Elise somewhere safe.”
A sound came from the background of the recording.
A door opening.
Lucan’s voice became quieter.
“Someone is here.”
The tape ended.
For several seconds, none of us moved.
Then Mr. Givens leaned toward the cassette player.
“There is more tape left.”
He pressed the button again.
Only silence played.
Then another voice appeared, faint and distant.
A woman’s voice.
Sabine’s.
“You should have stayed out of the accounts, Lucan.”
A crash followed.
Lucan shouted.
Then a second man said, “Get him into the car.”
The recording stopped.
Mrs. Voss stared at the machine.
“My children killed him.”
“We don’t know that,” I said.
“They were there.”
“We need to take this to the police.”
“No.”
I turned toward her.
“This proves what they did.”
“It proves theft. It proves they confronted him. But it does not prove murder.”
“Then we give them everything and let them investigate.”
Mrs. Voss looked toward the window.
“Your mother tried to expose them too.”
Sabine’s words returned to me.
It is the advice your mother refused to take.
Mrs. Voss reached across the table.
“You cannot keep those documents in your apartment.”
“I’ll make copies.”
“Give the originals to Mr. Givens. No one must know where they are.”
The following weeks passed beneath a cloud of fear.
Mrs. Voss’s children visited more often.
The medical evaluation took place, but Mrs. Voss answered every question correctly. She knew the date, the president, her address, and the value of her property.
The doctor refused to declare her incompetent.
Calder was furious.
Sabine became quiet.
That frightened me more.
Mrs. Voss met privately with an attorney named Marla Kenney. She signed new documents, recorded a statement, and placed several envelopes inside a locked metal box.
She still did not pay me.
But by then, the money no longer mattered.
On my seventh month of visiting her, Mrs. Voss began growing weaker.
She stopped climbing the stairs.
Her hands turned cold even when the heat was running.
One Thursday, I found her sitting beside the blue door with Lucan’s old sweatshirt across her lap.
“I dreamed about him last night,” she said.
“What happened in the dream?”
“He came through the front door.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He asked why I stopped looking.”
I sat beside her.
“You believed he was dead.”
“That is what I told myself.”
She reached inside the sweatshirt pocket and removed the silver chain that held the blue-room key.
She placed it around my neck.
“I need you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“When my children tell you that you do not belong here, do not believe them.”
I tried to smile.
“They’ve already told me.”
“They will say worse.”
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“This house belongs to the person who cared for what was inside it. Not to the people who only cared about its price.”
The next Thursday, I arrived at four o’clock.
An ambulance was parked outside.
Sabine stood on the porch.
Her cream coat was buttoned to her throat.
Behind her, two paramedics carried a covered stretcher through the front door.
I knew before anyone spoke.
My knees almost gave way.
“What happened?”
Sabine looked at me without emotion.
“She died in her sleep.”
“I saw her last week. She was talking. She was walking.”
“She was eighty-one.”
“Where is Mr. Givens?”
“This has nothing to do with him.”
I tried to enter the house.
Sabine blocked the doorway.
“My things are inside.”
“You have no things here.”
“My coat. My cleaning supplies.”
She pointed toward the kitchen.
The mop stood beside the wall.
“She’s gone,” Sabine said. “There’s nothing left for you to clean. Take your things and get out before I call the police.”
For a moment, I wanted to tell her about the cassette tape.
I wanted to tell her about the ledgers, the false accounts, and the voice recorded inside the basement.
Instead, I picked up my wet coat.
I did not argue.
Sabine smiled as I walked toward the porch.
She thought she had won.
Then Mr. Givens stepped out of his house.
He crossed the yard and placed a manila envelope in my hand.
“Odette told me to give you this after she was gone.”
Sabine rushed down the steps.
“What envelope?”
Mr. Givens moved between us.
“It belongs to Merrick.”
“Everything belonging to my mother is part of her estate.”
“Not this.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a copy of the deed to the house.
My name had been typed beneath the words NEW LEGAL OWNER.
A notarized letter stated that Mrs. Voss had transferred the property to me three weeks earlier.
Sabine snatched the paper from my hand.
“This is impossible.”
Mr. Givens calmly took it back.
“There are copies.”
“She was incompetent.”
“The examining physician disagreed.”
“She was manipulated by a stranger.”
“Merrick is not a stranger.”
Sabine looked at me.
Mr. Givens continued.
“He is Lucan’s son.”
Sabine’s face hardened.
“He has no proof.”
A second document rested inside the envelope.
It was the result of a private DNA test Mrs. Voss had arranged using a lock of Lucan’s hair preserved inside his childhood Bible.
The probability of a biological relationship was printed in bold letters.
99.8 percent.
Sabine stared at it.
Then she laughed.
“You think this changes anything? Lucan was a thief. His son inherits nothing.”
I reached deeper into the envelope.
There was a flash drive.
A key.
And a final letter written in Mrs. Voss’s unsteady handwriting.
Merrick,
By the time you read this, my children will already be inside the house searching for the records. Let them search.
The originals are safe.
There is one truth I did not have the courage to tell you while I was alive.
Lucan was not killed in the warehouse fire.
My breath stopped.
I read the next line twice.
Then a third time.
Sabine watched my face.
“What does it say?”
I folded the letter.
“Nothing.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Behind her, a police car turned onto the street.
Another vehicle followed it.
A dark sedan stopped beside the curb.
The driver’s door opened.
A man stepped out.
He appeared to be in his late forties. His hair was gray at the temples, and a scar crossed the left side of his face.
He looked at Sabine first.
Then he looked directly at me.
His right hand gripped the car door.
His little finger curved inward exactly like mine.
Sabine stumbled backward.
“No,” she whispered.
The man crossed the street slowly.
His eyes never left my face.
“Merrick?”
I could not answer.
He stopped three feet away from me.
“My name is Lucan Voss,” he said. “I believe I’m your father.”
Then he looked toward the stretcher waiting beside the ambulance.
His face collapsed.
“I came too late to save my mother,” he whispered.
A police officer stepped out of the first car.
Lucan lifted his eyes toward Sabine.
“But I’m not too late to tell them who killed yours.”
PART 3…
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3…
