Chapter 13 - WHAT HAPPENED TO ELIAS WARD
The federal archive finally answered the question I had carried since childhood.
Elias did not abandon us.
He entered a protected-cooperator process under another name after supplying early testimony.
Then the case fractured.
Officials disagreed.
Evidence disappeared.
Some witnesses backed away.
Mara no longer trusted the process.
Elias remained separated from us because Calder’s network was still active.
For four years, he sent letters through Samuel Price.
Mom kept them.
None were in my childhood boxes.
I wanted to hate her completely.
Then I read the risk assessments.
Threats.
Surveillance.
One attempted break-in.
A photograph of two-year-old me taken from across a playground.
Fear had not been imaginary.
Still:
Elias asked to see me.
Mara said no.
That was her decision.
Not fate.
Elias eventually relocated to Nova Scotia under his own altered identity.
He died there at forty-seven from a cerebral aneurysm.
No assassination.
No mysterious car explosion.
A body fails even in the middle of unfinished history.
Canadian records confirmed it.
So did DNA retained from personal effects.
My father had been dead for seventeen years.
I sat in Rachel’s office and cried for a relationship I had never actually had.
Then Samuel gave me a sealed audio cassette.
Elias recorded it six months before his death.
For Hannah.
I did not play it.
May you like
Not yet.
For once, an object connected to my father could wait without someone using my delay against me.
