The morning after our conversation began without anything unusual.
Sunlight slipped through the curtains.
The kettle clicked off.
Michael complained that I had used the last clean spoon and somehow blamed me for a problem he had created himself.
I told him that if he washed dishes more often, civilization might survive.
He laughed.
It was the kind of morning I had once taken for granted.
Then the phone rang.
Michael looked at the screen.
His smile disappeared.
“It's Daniel.”
He answered.
I watched his expression change while he listened.
“What happened?”
A pause.
“Don't touch anything.”
Another pause.
“I'll be there.”
He hung up.
“What is it?”
“The workshop.”
“Something broke?”
“No.”
He stood.
“Someone broke in.”
We drove there immediately.
The front window had been shattered.
Glass covered the floor.
Several drawers were open.
Tools were scattered across the workbenches.
Daniel stood outside with his arms crossed, looking pale.
“No one was hurt,” he said.
Michael nodded.
“What did they take?”
“Cash from the register. Some equipment.”
Michael walked inside.
He moved slowly.
Not because of his leg.
Because he was looking.
Every shelf.
Every drawer.
Every familiar object.
I stayed behind him.
Daniel pointed toward the back room.
“The safe is open.”
Michael stopped.
“What was inside?”
“Old documents.”
I looked at him.
He turned.
“What documents?”
Daniel shook his head.
“I don't know. Michael kept them.”
Michael's face changed.
The box containing his father's papers had been stored in that safe.
He walked toward it.
The box was gone.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Michael whispered, “The watch.”
I knew immediately what he meant.
The old watch was not inside.
It was at home.
But the documents were gone.
Catherine's letters.
The accident records.
The old correspondence.
Everything that had once seemed like dead history.
Now someone had taken it.
“Why would anyone want those?” I asked.
Michael didn't answer.
Daniel looked nervous.
“Should we call the police?”
“Yes,” Michael said.
While Daniel made the call, Michael stood near the broken window.
“What are you thinking?”
“That this wasn't random.”
“Why?”
“They didn't take the expensive equipment first.”
He pointed toward the shelves.
“The newer tools are worth more.”
“But they took the documents.”
“Yes.”
That meant whoever had entered the workshop knew where to look.
The police arrived.
They took photographs.
Asked questions.
Checked the locks.
Nothing obvious was found.
One officer asked Michael whether he had enemies.
Michael almost smiled.
“Doesn't everyone?”
The officer didn't smile.
Michael sighed.
“I don't know.”
That answer was true.
But I could see the question forming in his mind.
The past had followed us again.
That evening, we returned home.
Michael placed the old watch on the table.
He stared at it.
“You think someone wants the documents because of your father?”
“I don't know.”
“Could it be the man who caused the accident?”
“He's sick.”
“That doesn't mean he couldn't have someone acting for him.”
Michael shook his head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he had nothing left to gain.”
I looked at the watch.
“Then who does?”
Michael didn't answer.
The next morning, the police called.
They had found something.
A fingerprint.
It belonged to someone with no obvious connection to us.
That should have been reassuring.
It wasn't.
Because the name attached to the fingerprint was one I recognized.
Daniel.
I stared at Michael.
“That can't be right.”
Michael didn't speak.
We asked Daniel to come to the house.
He arrived twenty minutes later.
When Michael told him about the fingerprint, Daniel went pale.
“I didn't do it.”
“I believe you,” Michael said.
Daniel looked relieved.
Then confused.
“Why?”
“Because if you had broken in, you wouldn't have left your fingerprint.”
Daniel frowned.
Michael continued.
“Someone used your tools.”
Daniel stared.
“My tools?”
“The fingerprint was on the screwdriver.”
Daniel shook his head.
“I lost that screwdriver last week.”
Michael looked at me.
A chill moved through me.
Someone had been preparing.
The police returned.
They questioned Daniel again.
He remembered something.
Three days before the break-in, a man had come into the workshop asking about old records.
“What did he look like?” the officer asked.
Daniel described him.
Michael listened.
Then he looked at me.
“That was him.”
“Who?”
“The man from the hospital.”
My stomach tightened.
“The man who caused the accident?”
“No.”
Michael's voice was low.
“The man who had the documents.”
I didn't understand.
“Who?”
He looked toward the old watch.
“The man my father trusted before he died.”
I remembered the name from the letter.
Michael's father had mentioned someone who could hold certain papers for him.
A friend.
Someone Michael had never met.
Someone who had disappeared after the accident.
The police wanted to know whether we had any idea where he might be.
Michael shook his head.
But that night, he did something unexpected.
He opened an old drawer.
Inside was a photograph.
A younger man stood beside Michael's father.
Michael placed it on the table.
“I've seen him before.”
“Where?”
“At the hospital.”
I stared at the photograph.
The face was older now.
But unmistakable.
“What does he want?”
Michael's expression hardened.
“I don't know.”
Then his phone rang.
A text appeared.
One sentence.
Stop looking for what was buried.
Michael showed it to me.
I felt the room go cold.
He looked at me.
For the first time in years, I saw fear in his eyes.
Not fear for himself.
Fear for us.
Click Here to continue read next: PART14: The Warning Was Only the Beginning, Because the Missing Papers Revealed a Secret That Could Change What Michael Had Believed About His Father’s Final Days
At Forty, I Had Stopped Expecting Love to Knock, So When My Mother Offered Michael, I Made a Choice I Thought Would Cost Me Nothing
Part 13 of 16
