Chapter 5
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
My mother had died nine years earlier.
She had never told me she lived in Austin.
As far as I knew, she had spent most of her adult life in San Antonio.
Yet there she was.
Standing on the front porch of the house I had purchased by chance.
Except suddenly it didn’t feel like chance.
I turned the photograph over.
Handwritten on the back:
1998. Evelyn Mercer. Oak Haven.
Evelyn Mercer was my mother.
Rachel stared at me.
“You’re certain?”
“That’s her.”
Denise looked confused.
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
I felt dizzy.
“I found this house online.”
Rachel leaned forward.
“Who was your real-estate agent?”
“Daniel Price.”
“Who recommended him?”
I opened my mouth.
Then stopped.
Karen had.
Not directly.
When I first toured the neighborhood alone, Karen had been watering flowers near the entrance.
She introduced herself.
Friendly.
Warm.
Helpful.
She asked whether I was looking to buy.
I said yes.
She handed me Daniel’s card.
“He knows every property in Oak Haven,” she’d said.
At the time, it felt neighborly.
Now my skin crawled.
“Karen connected me to the agent.”
Denise whispered, “Oh God.”
Rachel’s eyes sharpened.
“Who sold you the house?”
“A company.”
I searched old emails.
The seller was Westbridge Property Management LLC.
Rachel looked it up.
The company had dissolved three months after my purchase.
Registered manager:
Daniel Price.
My real-estate agent had represented me while selling me a house through his own company.
“That was disclosed somewhere,” I said.
“It had to be.”
“Maybe through an affiliated ownership notice buried in your documents,” Rachel replied.
“But that’s not the biggest question.”
“What is?”
“How did your mother connect to this property?”
I called my aunt Susan.
She was my mother’s younger sister and the only close relative I had left.
When I asked whether Mom had ever lived on Oak Haven Drive, Susan went silent.
“Aunt Susan?”
“Where did you hear that?”
My chest tightened.
“So she did.”
Another silence.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“Your mother didn’t want you to.”
I stood and walked away from Rachel and Denise.
“Why?”
Susan sighed.
“You were little.”
“How little?”
“Four.”
I nearly dropped the phone.
“I lived there?”
“For a while.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Fragments of memories surfaced.
A staircase.
A blue bedroom wall.
A large oak tree.
I had always assumed they belonged to another childhood home.
“What happened?”
Susan hesitated.
“Your father happened.”
I rarely heard anyone mention him.
He left when I was five.
Mom told me only that he was unreliable and dangerous with money.
“What did Dad do?”
“He invested with some people.”
“What people?”
“I don’t know all the names.”
“Was one Richard Coleman?”
Susan inhaled sharply.
That was enough.
“You know him.”
“I knew the name.”
“Tell me.”
“Your father and Richard were involved in property investments. Small developments. Foreclosures. That kind of thing.”
“And this house?”
“Your mother inherited it.”
“From whom?”
“Your grandfather.”
I sat down.
Nobody had ever told me my grandfather owned property in Austin.
Susan continued.
“Your father borrowed against the house.”
“Without Mom’s permission?”
“With forged documents, according to her.”
My stomach tightened.
“Did she report him?”
“She tried.”
“What happened?”
“There was a lawsuit. Then suddenly your father disappeared from your lives and your mother moved.”
“Did she lose the house?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t remember.”
Rachel motioned for the phone.
I put Susan on speaker.
“Mrs. Grant, this is Rachel Kim. I’m an attorney representing your niece. Do you remember whether Evelyn believed the foreclosure was legitimate?”
Susan gave a humorless laugh.
“No.”
“What did she believe?”
“That Richard stole it.”
The room went silent.
Rachel asked, “Did Evelyn ever recover anything?”
“No. She spent years trying.”
“Do you have her records?”
“Maybe.”
“Where?”
“Storage.”
My pulse raced.
“What storage?”
Susan named a facility outside San Antonio.
Mom’s old belongings had been there since she died.
I had forgotten about them.
Most were boxes nobody wanted to sort through.
I drove there the next morning with Rachel.
Unit 307 smelled like cardboard and dust.
It took us two hours.
Then I found a gray plastic bin labeled HOUSE.
Inside were folders.
Court documents.
Bank statements.
Letters.
Photographs.
And a journal.
Mom’s handwriting covered the first page.
If anything happens to me, Richard Coleman knows why I lost Oak Haven.
I sat on the concrete floor.
My hands began shaking.
Rachel crouched beside me.
“We need to document everything before moving it.”
We photographed the box as found.
Then every folder.
The lawsuit dated back to 1999.
My mother had accused my father, Michael Mercer, and Richard of forging a deed of trust.
The case never reached trial.
It was dismissed after Mom’s attorney withdrew.
A handwritten note explained why.
Michael threatened to take Emily.
Me.
My name on that page broke something inside me.
Mom had walked away from the house to protect me.
Another document showed who obtained the property after foreclosure.
Cobalt Property Partners.
Not Cobalt Residential Holdings.
But the mailing address was familiar.
Richard’s old office.
“This goes back twenty-seven years,” I whispered.
Rachel nodded.
“Maybe longer.”
We kept searching.
Then we found letters from my father.
Evelyn,
Stop fighting this.
Richard can make things difficult for both of us.
Take Emily and move on.
Another:
You don’t understand who you’re dealing with.
Another:
I’m warning you for the last time.
Then nothing.
“What happened to my father?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You said he disappeared.”
“Mom told me he left Texas.”
I searched his name online.
There were dozens of Michael Mercers.
No certainty.
Susan didn’t know where he was either.
We returned to Austin after dark.
As I pulled onto Oak Haven Drive, I noticed a car parked across from my house.
Black sedan.
Engine running.
When I slowed down, it drove away.
Rachel saw it too.
“You get the plate?”
“Part of it.”
We wrote it down.
My cameras showed nothing unusual.
But when I entered the house, something felt wrong.
I stood in the living room.
Listened.
Then I saw it.
The cabinet beneath my television was open.
I never left it open.
I called police.
Officer Daniels arrived.
There were no signs of forced entry.
No broken windows.
No damaged locks.
“Anything missing?”
I checked.
Laptop still there.
Television.
Jewelry.
Cash.
Nothing obvious.
Then I remembered the binder.
The copies of Project Lantern.
Gone.
My stomach dropped.
“Someone took documents.”
“Anything else?”
I ran upstairs.
The old photograph of my mother had been in my purse.
Still there.
The storage documents were with Rachel.
Safe.
But whoever entered didn’t know that.
Officer Daniels checked the back door.
No damage.
Then he inspected the smart lock logs.
At 3:42 p.m., the door had been opened using a valid access code.
My code.
I stared at the screen.
“That’s impossible.”
“Anyone else know it?”
“No.”
“Has it ever been written somewhere?”
“No.”
Then I remembered the installation.
The smart lock had been installed before I moved in.
Daniel Price had given me the temporary code.
I changed it.
At least, I thought I did.
The system stored multiple user codes.
I opened the administrator panel.
There were two.
Mine.
And one labeled MAINTENANCE.
Active since before I purchased the house.
I deleted it immediately.
Officer Daniels looked grim.
“Who had access before you?”
“The seller.”
“Daniel Price?”
“Yes.”
He wrote the name down.
The next morning, police visited Daniel’s office.
It was empty.
Not closed for the day.
Empty.
Furniture removed.
Phones disconnected.
His website gone.
His real-estate license status showed inactive.
Rachel called me.
“He knew we were coming.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Then she added, “But there’s more.”
She had reviewed my closing documents overnight.
Buried on page eighty-four was a disclosure that Westbridge Property Management had an ownership interest in the house.
I had signed it electronically with more than one hundred other pages.
But another document was strange.
A right-of-first-refusal agreement.
It supposedly gave Cobalt Residential the option to purchase my property if I sold within five years.
“I never agreed to that.”
“Your electronic signature appears on it.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
Rachel compared the timestamp.
The document was signed at 2:11 a.m.
I had signed my closing packet around six in the evening.
“That’s not mine.”
“I believe you.”
“Can we prove it?”
“Maybe.”
Then she showed me another detail.
The IP address used to apply my signature.
It was not mine.
It originated from Richard Coleman’s insurance office.
I stared at the screen.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Normally I would ignore it.
This time I answered.
Nobody spoke.
“Hello?”
Breathing.
Then a man’s voice.
Older.
Weak.
“Emily?”
Nobody called me that except family.
“Who is this?”
A long pause.
Then the words I never expected to hear.
“It’s your father.”
My knees nearly gave out.
“Michael?”
“Yes.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Where have you been?”
“There isn’t time.”
My anger exploded.
“You disappear for more than twenty years and now there isn’t time?”
“Richard knows you found your mother’s files.”
I went cold.
“How do you know?”
“Because he called me.”
“Why?”
“To remind me what happens if I talk.”
I gripped the phone.
“What happened twenty-seven years ago?”
My father began crying.
“I helped him take that house.”
I closed my eyes.
“You forged Mom’s signature.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I owed money.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“To Richard?”
“To people Richard worked for.”
My voice shook.
“And Mom?”
“She found out.”
“So you threatened her with me.”
Silence.
“Yes.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead I whispered, “Why are you calling now?”
“Because Richard never stopped.”
“What does that mean?”
“He didn’t want your house back because of the value.”
My heart pounded.
“Then why?”
“Your grandfather hid something there.”
“What?”
“I never knew exactly.”
“Money?”
“No.”
“Documents?”
“Maybe.”
He coughed.
“Your grandfather kept records. Richard believed those records could destroy people.”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“You lived there.”
“I searched.”
“Did Richard?”
“For years.”
My eyes moved around my living room.
Walls.
Floorboards.
Attic.
My father whispered, “Emily, listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“If Richard realizes you’re searching too, he won’t stop at fines.”
A crash sounded through the phone.
My father gasped.
Then I heard another voice in the background.
A man.
“Michael?”
My father whispered one final sentence.
May you like
“He found me.”
The call ended.
