Chapter 23 #2
Truer words had rarely been spoken. I knew people did all sorts of things I’d never expect.
I thought of Cole Haywood. In a million years, in all of those meetings we had about getting me out of prison, it had never occurred to me that Cole was the one who put me there.
I hadn’t known about Prentice’s affair with Cole’s beloved wife, or Prentice’s role in her death.
So many things I hadn’t known and hadn’t seen coming.
Everyone kept saying my mother had been a devoted parent who never would have left Griffen or me.
“How do you know Sarah ran off with my father?” Paige asked slowly.
She spoke the words I didn’t want to think. Everyone looked at her in surprise.
“What do you mean?” Harvey asked.
“I mean, we know that they had some kind of relationship based on the letters and some other things we found. It seems fair to say they were in love, also based on the letters.” She looked at Griffen, who had more of a background in this kind of intrigue than anyone else in the room.
“But we don’t actually know that they left together. ”
She was right, and I felt like an idiot for not considering that myself. Everyone assumed they’d run off together because no one had heard from our parents since they disappeared. But what if they hadn’t run off? What if something had happened to them?
Paige and Griffen stared at one another until he asked, “How did your mother get the news? Did she ever tell you?”
“A letter,” Paige said. “She got a letter.”
“So, she didn’t hear directly from Paul that he was running off with our mother?” Griffen asked.
Paige shook her head slowly. “Not in person, not a phone call. I know because she was aggrieved at that part—not just that he’d left, but that he hadn’t bothered to tell her in person. How did you find out?” she asked, looking at Edgar and Harvey. “Who told you she ran off with another man?”
“Prentice,” Edgar said, and looked to Harvey, who nodded in agreement.
“Prentice said there was a big showdown,” Harvey added. “He said she told him she was leaving him, and he told her she’d never get the kids. And she said they’d see about that, and she stormed out with her suitcases.”
“He never said who she stormed out with?” I asked, suddenly seeing all the holes in the story.
Harvey shook his head slowly. “Just that a man was driving the car. If he knew it was Paul, he never said.” Harvey glanced at Edgar, who shook his head. “There were those postcards,” Harvey said to Griffen and me. “You got postcards from Sarah for years.”
Griffen glanced at me, and I nodded.
“We did,” Griffen agreed, “but we compared them to the letters, which we’re very sure were written by our mother, and the handwriting isn’t the same.”
“What are you saying?” Edgar challenged, looking from Paige to Griffen.
I knew exactly what she was going to say. I could tell she’d gotten there, too.
“I don’t know,” Paige said, “but it’s occurred to me that no one’s found a sign of Sarah since the day she left this house.”
“Cooper Sinclair has had people looking,” I added, “but so far there’s no sign of Paul Williams either. So—”
“Are you implying that they didn’t run off together?” Edgar demanded.
“Maybe,” Paige said. She let out a long sigh, leaning into my side enough to send Edgar’s eyebrows up as he noticed.
“I don’t know. It just seems odd that there’s nothing.
All I’ve ever heard about Sarah Sawyer is how much she loved her kids, and yet she just left?
Not a word, but those postcards that she didn’t send.
So, who sent the postcards? And my father…
” Her shoulders slumped. “I can see him leaving my mother. And I could see leaving her when she was pregnant with me. He’d never even held me.
It wasn’t real to him the way Ford and Griffen would have been to Sarah. But I don’t know…”
She shook her head again.
“All my life, I’ve had this idea in my head of him living a second life without me or my mother.
But wouldn’t he have left a footprint of some kind?
He was doing business with Prentice Sawyer.
He had real estate investments. I don’t know if my mother was aware of any of that, or, if she was, why she didn’t try to get control of assets that should have gone to her as his wife.
I know she looked. And she never found anything.
So where is he? How could someone just disappear? ”
It was a great question. I had the same one, despite what we’d said earlier about Sarah being smart and completely erasing herself to get away from my father. Back then, you could do that much more easily. But Paige was right. Real estate investments had paperwork.
Harvey and Edgar shared a glance I couldn’t read.
“I don’t know how many records I have that go that far back,” Edgar said.
“It’s ancient history. But I’ll look through my files to see if I can find out what might have happened to your father’s property.
As for the rest—” He shook his head, regret heavy in his eyes as he glanced at Hope.
“I wish I had more answers for you. But my guess is that Griffen’s connections with the Sinclairs will get you more information than anything I could turn up.
I can promise you I’ve not laid eyes on Sarah Sawyer since before the day Prentice said she walked out of this house.
And aside from Prentice telling me about those postcards she was supposedly sending, I’ve never heard of anyone having any contact with her since that day. ”
Harvey let out a long, gusty sigh, his eyes sadder than I’d ever seen them. “Me either,” he said. “I was always sorry she left you boys. She was such a good mother, but there was a part of me that was glad she was out there somewhere, living a better life.”
“Well, was that it?” Edgar asked, bracing his palms on his knees as if getting ready to stand.
“I guess,” Hope said. “If you two think of anything, you’ll let us know?”
“Of course, of course,” Edgar said, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m going to make my way to the dining room, help myself to a cocktail. Sad memories,” he said. “A little whiskey will do the trick.”