Two days earlier, he had given Ethan the case.
“He said to hide it somewhere you wouldn’t find it.”
Ethan looked at me nervously.
“He said it was important.”
Then the man stuck the black disc behind his ear and covered it with the skin-colored patch.
He called it their secret key.
“He said not to tell anyone.”
Ethan swallowed.
“Especially you.”
Then he said something else.
“He said he’d see me Monday.”
Officer Patel leaned forward.
“Why Monday?”
“To talk again.”
Then Ethan added,
“He said the key belonged to Dad.”
I could barely breathe.
“He said you might throw Dad’s stuff away.”
That sentence broke something in me.
I dropped to my knees in front of him.
“Ethan, look at me.”
He did.
“I would never throw away your father’s things. Ever. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“I kept everything.”
But the uncertainty in his face told me the damage had already been done.
For two weeks, somebody had been teaching my son to doubt me.
Then Officer Patel asked,
“What did the man tell you to call him?”
Ethan answered,
“Uncle Derek.”
The kitchen became completely silent.
Derek.
Ryan’s older brother.
Ethan had met Derek when he was very young.
He wouldn’t have recognized him now.
And Derek clearly had not introduced himself honestly at first.
I sat down.
Officer Patel was watching me.
So I explained.
Derek had not attended Ryan’s funeral.
Ryan did not want him there.
In fact, during the last months of his life, Ryan had made me promise something.
“Keep Derek away from Ethan.”
He was weak then.
Barely strong enough to talk.
But he made me promise.
I did.
The brothers had stopped speaking roughly a year before Ryan became sick.
Whenever I asked why, Ryan dismissed it as family financial trouble.
He refused to drag me into it.
Then he got sick.
The feud seemed unimportant compared with everything else.
I assumed Ryan simply held a grudge.
Now Derek was standing near Ethan’s school.
Manipulating him.
Convincing him his own mother could not be trusted.
A few minutes later, Officer Patel’s partner asked her to step outside.
Then she returned.
“Can you come onto the porch?”
I followed her.
She pointed beneath the edge of the railing.
There, carefully hidden against the wood, was a tiny camera.
It was aimed directly at my front door.
