“There’s one more thing,” said Dad. “I don’t like saying it. But I’d be a poor excuse for a father if I didn’t.”
The recording paused. Just a long, crackling silence. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. My father’s kitchen clock, the one shaped like a rooster. And far off, the mockingbird in the maple tree.
“Lydia. Honey. If you’re sitting in that room right now, and your husband just jumped up out of his chair, I’m sorry. I really am. I hoped I was wrong about him. Every day, I hoped I was wrong. I wanted so badly to be wrong.”
My eyes filled up.
“But I’d rather you hear it from me, from the grave, than find out in two years, when the money’s gone and you’re alone.”
The recording ended. The little screen on the phone went dark.
And then Martin did something I didn’t expect.
He reached into his folder one more time and took out a small silver USB drive. It had a strip of masking tape on it, and on the masking tape, in my father’s handwriting: AUG 21 — BACK OFFICE.
I recognized it. It was the drive Dad had set aside from the box. The one he’d turned over in his fingers and never said a word about.
Martin plugged it into his laptop and turned the laptop’s speaker toward the table.
“Mr. Brandt left this as well,” he said. “It’s an excerpt from the shop’s security system. The audio channel from the back office camera. Mr. Brandt had Teddy Marsh pull it from the recorder and bring it to him in hospice. His instructions to me were to play it only if the first recording produced, and I’m quoting him here, ‘a certain kind of reaction.'”
Ethan’s voice cracked. “What does that mean?”
“I believe,” said Martin, “that he anticipated you might try to stop it.”
He pressed the space bar.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.