Chapter 6 - Someone Was Watching My Mother
The first warning came from a hospital nurse.
The second came from a security camera.
The third came from a man who knew my childhood nickname.
By then, I was beginning to understand that whoever was watching my mother had been watching me for much longer.
It was Thursday morning when Nurse Rachel called.
"Eliza, has your mother recently authorized any new visitors?"
My stomach tightened.
"No. Why?"
"A man came upstairs claiming to be an insurance representative. He asked for her complete treatment history."
"Did you give it to him?"
"Absolutely not. But he knew her room number, date of birth, and previous hospital."
I closed my eyes.
"Can you describe him?"
"Gray hair. Around sixty. Very polite."
"Did he leave a name?"
Rachel hesitated.
"Daniel Miller."
The phone nearly slipped from my hand.
Daniel.
My father's first name.
Probably a coincidence.
But coincidences had begun feeling increasingly dangerous.
Dr. Amelia Patel met with me that afternoon.
She reviewed my mother's medical records and explained her proposed treatment plan in a way I could actually understand.
For the first time in months, somebody spoke about possibilities instead of unpaid balances.
"We need additional imaging and a multidisciplinary review," she said. "I won't promise an outcome, but I do believe we have treatment options worth pursuing."
Hope was such a strange feeling.
It almost hurt.
"How much will everything cost?"
Dr. Patel slid a brochure toward me.
"Your mother may qualify for a combination of hospital financial assistance and nonprofit support. My coordinator will help you apply."
I stared at her.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
When I stepped into the hallway, Adriano was waiting.
He held two paper cups of coffee.
"How did it go?"
I accepted one.
"She thinks Mom has options."
He nodded.
"Good."
I looked down at the cup.
There was no dramatic speech.
No promise that his money could solve everything.
Just warm coffee and a man who had remembered I hadn't eaten breakfast.
"Thank you," I whispered.
"For what?"
"For not making me feel like another problem you need to fix."
Something shifted in his expression.
"You're not a problem, Eliza."
We stood quietly beside the window.
Then his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
"Marco."
The warmth disappeared from his face.
"What happened?"
An hour later, I sat inside Detective Ruiz's office watching security footage from the hospital.
The recording showed an older man approaching the nurses' station.
Gray hair.
Dark overcoat.
Black leather gloves.
His face was partially obscured by the camera angle.
He spoke briefly to Rachel, then moved toward the elevator.
As he turned, I noticed something.
A slight limp.
My breathing changed.
"Pause it."
Ruiz stopped the video.
I leaned forward.
"Can you zoom in?"
The image became larger but blurrier.
The man rested his left hand against the elevator railing.
His little finger was crooked.
An old injury.
I remembered holding that same hand when I was seven years old.
My father had broken his little finger fixing our kitchen cabinet.
It had never healed straight.
"Eliza?" Adriano asked quietly.
I pointed at the screen.
"That's my father."
Ruiz looked at me.
"Are you certain?"
"No."
My throat tightened.
"But I think it is."
She rewound the footage.
I watched again.
The walk.
The posture.
The way he tilted his head when listening.
Seventeen years had passed.
I had imagined his face older a thousand times.
But I had never imagined finding him standing outside my mother's hospital room.
I pressed both hands against my mouth.
"Why didn't he come inside?"
Nobody answered.
That night, I returned to the temporary apartment and found a voicemail waiting on my phone.
Unknown number.
No caller identification.
The recording lasted only eleven seconds.
At first, there was silence.
Then a man's voice.
Older.
Unsteady.
"Little Star..."
My entire body froze.
Only one person had ever called me that.
My father.
"If the seventeenth step has opened, don't trust the first thing you find inside the box."
A faint noise sounded in the background.
Someone speaking.
The man inhaled sharply.
Then the recording ended.
I replayed it.
Again.
And again.
The same voice.
The same childhood nickname.
I called Adriano.
"He's alive."
"What happened?"
I played the recording.
For several seconds, he didn't speak.
Then he said, "I'm coming over."
Adriano arrived without his bodyguards entering the apartment.
I was sitting on the kitchen floor when he found me.
He crouched nearby.
"Eliza."
"He's alive."
"I heard the message."
"He knew about the staircase."
"Yes."
"Why wouldn't he come home?"
My voice cracked.
"Seventeen years, Adriano. Seventeen birthdays. Every Christmas. My high-school graduation. My mother's diagnosis."
He didn't interrupt.
"I used to sit by the window and wait for his car."
Tears spilled down my face.
"Do you know how many times I wondered what was wrong with me?"
Adriano's expression tightened.
"Nothing was wrong with you."
"Then why?"
"I don't know."
For once, his ignorance comforted me more than a confident answer.
He sat beside me on the floor.
Not touching.
Not demanding anything.
Just staying.
After a while, I rested my head against the kitchen cabinet.
"Did you miss your father?"
"Every day."
"Does it get easier?"
He looked toward the dark window.
"You learn to carry it differently."
I wiped my face.
"That sounds terrible."
A faint, sad smile touched his mouth.
"Sometimes it is."
Near midnight, Reynolds called.
The bank had agreed to an expedited review following new evidence that Daniel Brennan might still be alive.
A temporary preservation order would prevent the safe-deposit box from being accessed or emptied without appropriate legal supervision.
For the first time, we were getting somewhere.
I went to bed with my father's message playing repeatedly in my mind.
Don't trust the first thing you find inside the box.
At two seventeen in the morning, my phone illuminated the dark bedroom.
A new message.
This time, it was a photograph.
My father.
Older, thinner, sitting in a room with boarded windows.
A newspaper lay on the table beside him.
Today's newspaper.
Underneath the photograph were six words.
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT HIM BACK.
May you like
And the sender had included an address.
A deserted medical supply warehouse once owned by the Evergreen Initiative.
