Chapter 2 - THE LETTERS HE NEVER GAVE HER
Derek unpacked the groceries with unnecessary care.
Milk on the top shelf. Eggs in the door. Coffee beside the toaster. He kept moving so he would not have to look at Myranda.
“You were driving my car that night,” she said.
“I might’ve been.”
“You might’ve been out at two in the morning?”
“I was picking up materials.”
“For a job you never mentioned?”
His jaw tightened. “I didn’t write down every errand.”
Myranda placed the summons on the counter between them.
“It says previous notices were mailed here.”
Derek closed the refrigerator.
“I saw one. I figured it was junk.”
“A court notice looked like junk?”
“I forgot about it, okay?”
Callie’s bedroom door opened.
At twenty, she still had the same uncertain expression she had worn as a little girl whenever her parents argued. She stepped into the kitchen wearing sweatpants and an oversized Columbus State hoodie, though she had not attended class in more than a week.
“Dad said the first letter didn’t matter,” she murmured.
Derek looked at her sharply.
“Callie, stay out of this.”
Myranda turned toward her daughter. “There was more than one letter?”
Callie rubbed the cuff of her sleeve across her thumb.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Either you saw them or you didn’t.”
“Dad said you’d make it worse.”
The sentence landed harder than the summons.
Myranda had spent years being the person who fixed things. She made medical appointments, negotiated payment plans, remembered birthdays, filed taxes, and kept the family moving whenever Derek’s construction work slowed. Now her own daughter spoke as though telling her the truth was the dangerous choice.
Derek grabbed his truck keys.
“I’m not doing this while you’re interrogating her.”
“You’re not leaving.”
“Watch me.”
He walked out and slammed the door.
Callie flinched but did not follow him.
Myranda asked her where the other notices were. Callie shook her head, then glanced toward the small laundry closet beside the kitchen.
That glance was enough.
Behind a stack of detergent boxes, Myranda found three opened court envelopes held together with a rubber band. Beneath them lay a crumpled receipt from a storage facility in Reynoldsburg.
Her father’s tools had been stored there since his death eighteen months earlier.
The receipt showed three late-night gate entries under Myranda’s access code.
All three occurred while Derek had her car.
Callie backed away when Myranda held it up.
“What did he take from the storage unit?”
Her daughter’s eyes filled, but she gave no answer.
May you like
Myranda picked up her keys.
If Callie could not tell her what was missing, the empty spaces in the storage unit would.
