Page 33 of Keller

I flip to the next photo. The background shows the entrance to a hotel I know by name. The Asbury. It's a high-end place and known to be discreet. It's the kind of place people go when they don't want to be noticed.

I set the photographs aside and lift the layer beneath. A folded hotel receipt with her name printed at the top. The date reads two weeks before she died.

There's also a room key card, plain white plastic with a magnetic stripe. And finally, a slip of paper with a room number written in my father's handwriting.

I stare at it for a long moment. The numbers don't blur or shift, but seeing all of this stuff together like this sucks the air out of the room.

"Do you know who that is?"

Cain's voice pulls me back. I glance up at him. His expression is careful, watching me.

I pick up the first photograph again and study the man. He's wearing a signet ring on his left hand, and there's a scar near his eyebrow. His posture is angled toward her in a way that suggests comfort.

"I don't know. He might be one of the historians she worked with on one of her projects."

The photographs don't shock me. They confirm what I already know.

I was ten years old, sitting on the staircase in the middle of the night because raised voices woke me. My father's voicecarried through the house like a bullhorn. He was always so loud, especially when he was angry.

I remember my mother crying. The wordcheatingcut through everything else.

I remember he called her a slut, and she told him he was cruel. Both of those words stayed with me. In that moment, and in the days that followed, that is how I came to understand my parents.

My father could be cruel, a truth I knew intimately in my life with him before and after that night. I never knew my mother to be what he called her, but I know that word has suffocated me since that night.

She told him she was leaving, and he told her to get the fuck out. He literally spat out the word at her, and then I heard a door slam.

She was gone.

"He's probably dead now, too, the poor bastard. It's almost eerie finding them."

The next morning, a police officer stood at the door. My father answered. Ridge came downstairs first. I stayed on the landing, watching.

She'd been t-boned by a semi-truck on the way out to our cabin in Slydell. I never told anyone else, but I blamed my father for her death.

I close the box gently and clear my throat. My hands remain steady.

"Yep, I think you're right."

"Do you recognize him at all? Does it even matter? I guess not, except that they are pictures of our mother."

"No, I don’t, and I don't think they matter. It was probably something Dad put up there years ago and forgot about it."

I keep my tone even. I don't believe what I'm telling him, but this has been my secret to keep all these years. These photos, thehotel receipt, and the key. They all must be what led to the fight that night that I never told any of my brothers about.

Cain doesn't seem to be reading too much into them, which is good. That's how it needs to be. None of them should be burdened with what I know about that last night.

"What should we do with it? I can't stomach throwing away photos of Mom, even if they don't mean anything to us."

"I'd like to keep them, if you're okay with it. I like seeing her in these candid shots." I rub my finger over the top of the box, remembering the one on top of her in mid-laugh. I don't tell him I want to find this man.

"I texted Ridge earlier about it. Figured he might want to do something with it."

"What did he say?"

"He hasn't written back. I just asked him what he wanted me to do with them."

"Tell him they were just old photos and I'm keeping them."