“You can’t know that.”
“We do.”
She explained that another federal team had remained near the cemetery after I left.
My mother was still there when the message demanding I come home alone had been sent.
Her actual phone had not transmitted it.
Someone had made the message appear to come from her number.
Then the agent told me something worse.
My mother had received a message too.
It appeared to come from me.
Come home.
I need you alone.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Two messages.
Two family members.
Same destination.
Same instruction.
Someone had expected both of us to leave the funeral separately and walk into my parents’ house without witnesses.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“With agents.”
“Celeste? My children?”
“Being moved somewhere secure.”
I closed my eyes.
Three days earlier, I had believed the worst thing that could happen to a family had already happened.
I was beginning to understand that my father’s supposed death had been the beginning, not the end.
The agent turned toward the steel cabinet.
“Your father told us the key would get you into the unit.
He also said you would know how to open this.”
“I’ve never seen it before.”
“Look again.”
I did.
The cabinet was old, scratched along one edge, with a mechanical combination dial instead of an electronic lock.
Then I noticed four shallow marks beside the dial.
My father used to make marks like that on everything he repaired.
Four short cuts with the tip of a pocketknife.
When I was a child, he had taught me a number sequence for opening the battered toolbox in our garage.
He claimed it was our private code.
I had not thought about it in thirty years.
I entered the sequence.
The lock opened.
Inside were folders, photographs, storage drives, audio recordings and sealed envelopes arranged with obsessive care.
The top folder had my name on it.
Beneath it were folders for my mother, Celeste and the children.
My anger came instantly.
“He was keeping files on us?”
The agent pulled out the first photograph.
“No.
He was keeping files on the people watching you.”
The photograph showed my house from across the street.
Not a family picture.
Surveillance.
Another showed my father’s house.
Another showed the cemetery entrance.
A dark sedan appeared in all three images.
My stomach turned.
The photographs were dated months apart.
“He knew?”
