Chapter 20

Almost two in the morning and here I am, Meredith thought, sitting in a small, decrepit diner in Mount Greenwood.

She had been drinking coffee since she arrived three hours ago, and now she stared into her empty mug. She had her laptop with her and, at first, she had tried to do some work on the article. But after writing and deleting the same few words at least four times, she had given up. She felt too exhausted.

“Want a top off?” The waitress showed Meredith a pot of freshly brewed coffee.

“Thanks, I’m good.”

Meredith pulled the hood of her sweater over her head and wished she could block out the Tim McGraw song playing in the background. While the temperature reached eighty degrees outside, the large air conditioner above the entrance door worked at full blast. Every hair on her body stood straight up. She shivered and, sinking further into the worn-out vinyl booth, wrapped her arms around her torso. She considered stepping outside to smoke a cigarette but if she got up from that booth she wouldn’t come back. That wasn’t an option. She had already wasted three hours and she refused to walk away empty handed.

She and Isaac had finished going through the boxes and they hadn’t found the journals. With Colton’s help, she had discovered Glendon had a son, Liam, his only family member still living in Chicago. Earlier in the day, Meredith had called the diner where Liam worked and, after a brief phone conversation, he had agreed to speak to her after his shift ended.

Meredith closed her eyes and dozed off. She was startled awake by the presence of a stocky young man in a stained kitchen uniform standing next to her table.

“Liam?” she asked, sitting up straighter.

“You must be the one who called—a friend of one of my dad’s old coworkers?”

He didn’t sit down, and Meredith worried he might have changed his mind about talking to her. After having waited so long, the idea jarred her wide-awake.

“Ten minutes. Just give me ten minutes,” Meredith said. “Please.”

He stared at her for another long moment.

“Ten minutes,” she repeated.

He sat down across from her. “What do you want?” He sounded worn out.

Meredith fumbled inside her purse. “I wanted to give this back to you.”

She slid the photograph she had found in one of Glendon’s books across the table toward Liam. Besides telling her where she might find Liam, Colton had confirmed that Rebecca, the little girl in the photograph, was Glendon’s daughter. According to her file, she would be twenty-six years old now, but had been missing since shortly after she’d turned eighteen.

“My friend and I found this photograph inside an old book that belonged to your dad. I wanted to give it back to you.”

Liam picked up the photograph and stared at it, his expression unchanging. Meredith noticed how short his nails were. His cuticles looked darker than the skin of his fingers.

“That’s it? You wanted to give me an old photograph of my sister?” he asked.

“I’d have given it to your dad if I knew where I could find him.”

“He’s dead.”

Taken by surprise, she leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them. “He is? What happened?”

“He took off and then one day I got a call from some folks in North Dakota saying he killed himself.”

She didn’t understand why Colton hadn’t come across that information. “No one at the newspaper knows what happened to him.”

Liam shrugged. “Didn’t think to let ’em know, I guess. It’s not like he’d been much use for a while, anyways.”

“Your dad was a good reporter.” She had no idea if that were true but it felt like the right thing to say.

“Not after my sister started acting up, and for sure not after she took off.”

“Rebecca?”

Liam didn’t reply.

She shouldn’t expect Liam, a complete stranger, to speak to her about his family. Meredith needed to draw the information out of him but she couldn’t rely on her charm alone to achieve that.

Liam passed the photograph back to Meredith. “I have no use for this.”

Meredith glanced at it but didn’t take it.

“You didn’t come here to give me that photograph back. What do you want?”

She didn’t see the point of trying to come up with an excuse. “Your father was believed to be an expert on the subject I’m covering for an article. I was hoping you knew where I could find him. But, you already answered that question.” Meredith pointed at the photograph on the table. “If you don’t want it, can I keep it?”

“If you had met my sister you wouldn’t want it. She only brought hurt to everyone who went near her.”

Meredith took the photograph and put it back into her purse. “Do you know if your dad kept his files anywhere else besides the office?”

“What’s your article about?”

Now Meredith had to lie. “Personal finance. How young families can save up so one day they can send their kids to college. Same type of stuff your father used to write.”

“And you need his old files for that?”

“I want to reference some of the research studies he covered. I can read his articles but his notes, the information that was left out, is just as useful to me.”

“There are a couple of boxes of his stuff left in the house,” Liam said.

“Can I have a look at them?”

“Will you give me a ride home? My shift went long and I missed my ride. Don’t want to take the bus.”

Being alone in a car with a man who was essentially a stranger, in the middle of the night, driving to an unknown place, should have frightened her more than it did.

Meredith grabbed her purse and her laptop. “My car is parked right out front.”

They didn’t speak much during their drive, and by the time they reached Liam’s home on South St. Louis Avenue, it was past three thirty in the morning.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said as she turned off the engine. No cars drove by. She could barely make out the contours of Liam’s face in the dim light of the poorly lit street.

“They never found his body. Just his tent, his things, and the note he left. He was camping. He always liked being in nature. When my sister and I were kids, he always tried to take us.”

Meredith felt uneasy with the fact that Glendon’s body had never been found. “What did the note say? That he planned to kill himself?”

Liam nodded.

In that instant, Meredith wondered how she would feel if she suddenly lost her father. “I don’t have siblings,” she said. “My mom died when I was a kid. My grandparents are long gone. I only have my dad. If anything happened to him…I can’t imagine it.”

Liam remained quiet. He didn’t try to leave the car.

“The less people you have to care about the easier it is,” he finally said, matter of factly. “As least I imagine it would be.”

She picked up on Liam’s resentment. “Your sister never came back, did she?”

A car drove by and its headlights gave Meredith the chance to get a glimpse of Liam’s somber expression.

“She was trouble,” he replied. “On and off of the streets for years—drugs, hooking. When we finally stopped hearing from her, I thought it’d give my dad the chance to get his act together but it only made it worse.”

“You never wonder what happened to your sister? Where she might be?”

“I’m better off without her around.”

Liam got out the car and moved toward his house. Glancing at her surroundings to make sure no one had followed her, Meredith walked behind him.

“His stuff is in my sister’s old room,” Liam said, turning on the light. “Down the corridor, last door in the left. Just don’t make any noise. My girlfriend and daughter are asleep.”

As Meredith made her way to the room, the old hardwood floor creaked and she silently cursed to herself.

Mismatched pieces of furniture filled the bedroom. She gravitated toward the large pile of paper spilling out of a couple of boxes on top of a single bed frame. Not wanting to overstay her welcome, she started to search through the paper as fast as she could. Isaac had described the journals as being black leather bound, and Meredith kept an eye out for anything that fit that description.

Continuing to forage through the last two boxes, she came across another photograph of Rebecca. She looked about eighteen years old in this one and Meredith guessed it had been taken around the time she had disappeared. She resembled her brother with her long, dark curly hair and blue eyes.

Meredith put the photograph aside and continued to explore inside the box. She was about to reach the bottom when she came across a stack of three black notebooks held together by a rubber band. Adrenaline coursed through her. She opened the top one and instantly knew these were the journals they had been looking for. Glendon’s name was jotted on the back of the front cover and, as Meredith leafed through it, page after page revealed neat handwriting from beginning to end. Additional notes filled the blank edge of the pages.

Having found what she came for, Meredith put the new photograph of Rebecca inside her purse and slid the journals under her arm. She quietly left the room and peeked inside of the living room. When she saw Liam sitting on a reading chair, fast asleep, she exhaled in relief. She had grown up hearing her father say that life was all about taking advantage of good opportunities. She now had a chance to leave without having to answer any questions.

She turned away from Liam and was about to quietly sneak out the front door when she came face-to-face with a toddler.

“Hi.” The little girl looked up at Meredith.

Meredith stared at her with both panic and surprise. “Hi,” she whispered back.

“Her name is Becca,” Liam said from his chair.

Meredith held the journals closer to her body. “I’m on my way out. Sorry if I woke her.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Meredith had yet to turn around. She hoped Liam stayed in his chair.

The little girl took a step closer to Meredith, who almost automatically took a step back.

Liam chuckled. “She doesn’t bite.”

Meredith forced herself to smile at the little girl. “I’m just not very good with kids.”

Liam came up to them and Meredith held her breath. She wished she had a big enough purse to hide the journals. As he picked up his daughter, he saw the journals peeking from under Meredith’s arm. She faced him, waiting for him to ask her about it. If he didn’t press her to see them she could say they were some of his father’s financial research but if he did, he would catch her in a lie.

“You named her after your sister,” Meredith said, hoping to take his attention away from the journals. “Maybe she’ll return someday.”

Liam kissed his daughter’s cheek. “Rebecca’s dead.” He glanced at the journals. “I don’t want those back.”

He stepped aside and Meredith rushed out.

Liam might know the truth about the journals, she thought. When he had said that Rebecca had died, he could have been telling her what he knew, and not what he believed. Regardless, she had heard him loud and clear—he didn’t want to see Meredith again.