Chapter 5: The Evidence They Never Meant Me to Find

I spent the next three hours going through the family drive.

Most of the files were exactly what I expected—birthday parties, vacations, dinners, and years of Paige turning my worst moments into entertainment.

But now I watched everything differently.

I wasn't searching for memories anymore.

I was searching for proof.

Around midnight, I found another folder hidden inside an old backup directory.

It was labeled with a date from twelve years ago.

The date made my heart stop.

It was the week my mother died.

I opened it.

There were only six files.

The first was a photograph of my father's damaged SUV.

The second showed a repair invoice.

The third was a scanned police report.

I stared at the report for several seconds before opening it.

The official record stated that my mother had lost control of her vehicle on an icy road.

But the repair invoice showed something the police report didn't mention.

The SUV had been repaired two days before the accident.

The front bumper had been replaced.

I opened the fourth file.

It was a photograph of the same vehicle from the night of the crash.

The damage was concentrated on the rear passenger side.

Someone had hit my mother's car from behind.

My father's confession suddenly made sense.

He had been the one who caused the accident.

My hands began to shake.

Then I noticed something else.

The fifth file was an email exchange between my father and an insurance investigator.

My father had written that he was not present at the scene.

He claimed he had been home all night.

The investigator replied that there was no reason to question the statement because my mother's death had already been classified as accidental.

I opened the final file.

It was a scanned handwritten note.

The handwriting belonged to my mother.

My eyes moved slowly across the page.

She had written that she was frightened of my father.

She said they had argued that evening.

She said he had been drinking.

And she wrote one sentence that made my entire body go cold.

“If anything happens to me, Nora must never believe it was her fault.”

I covered my mouth.

For years, I'd secretly wondered whether I had caused my parents' marriage to collapse.

I'd believed my father when he said my mother had been stressed because of me.

I'd believed every cruel explanation they gave me.

Now I knew the truth.

My mother had been afraid of my father.

She had known something could happen.

And somehow, my father and my mother had both kept that truth buried.

I saved the note immediately.

Then I checked the file metadata.

The documents had been scanned years ago, but someone had modified the folder recently.

Yesterday.

The exact day before the blizzard.

My blood ran cold.

Someone had accessed these files recently.

Someone had been looking at the same evidence I had just found.

I checked the access history.

The most recent login came from Paige's laptop.

I stared at the screen.

Why would Paige be searching through the accident files?

She had always acted like she didn't care about anything except herself.

But now there was a question I couldn't ignore.

What did Paige know?

My phone suddenly buzzed.

It was Caleb.

“Nora, where are you?”

I didn't answer.

Another message appeared.

“Your parents said you were helping with the gala.”

Then another.

“You need to come home.”

I looked at the message for a long time.

A few weeks ago, those words would have made me feel wanted.

Tonight, they only made me suspicious.

I closed the chat.

Then I copied the access history along with every document into a second encrypted folder.

The gala was still three days away.

They thought I was going to stand on a stage and help them laugh at me.

They were wrong.

I wasn't going to expose everything yet.

Not until I knew exactly what Paige had discovered.

Not until I understood why she had accessed the accident files.

And most importantly, not until I knew what Caleb already knew.

I shut the laptop and looked at the clock.

It was almost two in the morning.

For the first time since I had returned to my parents' house, I felt something other than hurt.

I felt prepared.

They had spent ten years teaching me to stay quiet.

Now I was going to make them wish they had taught me how to speak.