Small footsteps.
Lily appeared in the doorway holding her blanket around her shoulders like a cape.
“The red bird,” she said.
Rebecca went still. “What?”
Lily looked only at you. “Daddy said if Rebecca was crying for real, tell her the red bird sings at five.”
The room fell silent in a way silence should not be allowed to fall.
Rebecca slapped a hand over her mouth and staggered back against the hallway wall. A strange sound escaped her, half-sob, half-laugh. She slid to the floor as if her knees had forgotten their purpose.
You had never heard of the red bird.
Apparently she had.
“That was our thing,” Rebecca whispered through her fingers. “A stupid phrase from our first date. We got coffee at this place that opened at five and had a cardinal logo on the cups. He used to text me that when he wanted me to call him in private.” She looked at Lily like she was seeing a miracle and a wound in the same instant. “He told you that?”
Lily nodded.
Now you believed two impossible things at once. One, your father had indeed hidden messages with Lily in ways adults wouldn’t notice. Two, Rebecca was probably not the enemy standing closest.
That left Mercer.
And whoever else he had bought.
You did not sleep the rest of the night.
Rebecca told you the pieces she knew. Mercer had been laundering money through shell property deals and using your father’s shop to rotate vehicles that couldn’t be traced back to him directly. Your father had wanted out. Mercer, smiling as always, had reminded him that accidents happen. Rebecca had begged your father to go to the police immediately, but he had refused until he had enough proof to make it stick.
“He thought if he moved too early, Mercer would bury it,” she said from the edge of your bed while Lily slept curled against your side. “He kept saying one clean shot. One clean shot and then it was over.”
“But he died.”
Rebecca looked at the floor. “Yes.”
