Careful not to wake her, I pull the bag out, sit on the floor with my back against the wall, and spread the pages by the light in coming from the corridor.
I’ve been through these so many times, I practically have them memorized. But tonight, I’m not looking at the content. I’m looking at the dates.
Dad was meticulous. Every page dated and time-stamped. His handwriting is careful and consistent, the same tight script from the first page to the last. He kept a running log of his investigation, what he found, when he found it, and what it was connected to. It’s chronological. Organized. The work of a man who knew the importance of a clear record.
I lay the pages out in order on the floor. The first entry is from fourteen months before the collapse. The last one is…
I check and double-check.
Six weeks before Dad disappeared.
Six weeks.
What the fuck?
I stare at the date. His handwriting is the same as on every other page, the last entry about a discrepancy in the development office’s filing system. He was just a man in mid-investigation and not in any particular hurry. And then bam, everything came to a screeching stop.
There’s no next page, no final entry, and no note that saysthey’re closing in…orI need to hide this…orif something happens to me…. Everything just ends abruptly without warning or inkling of impending danger. They just… stop. Mid-thought, practically. The last page reads like any other day—a man going about his work as if he’d be back at it tomorrow.
Except he wasn’t. Six weeks later, he was gone.
So what happened in those six weeks? Why wasn’t he taking notes up until the last minute?
I flip through the pages again, looking for something I missed like gaps in the dates, a page out of order, a sheet that got separated from the rest. There’s nothing. The record is complete and continuous from the first entry to the last, and then it stopsclean. There are no torn edges, no missing pages, and no sign that anything was removed.
He just stopped.
I guess there are a few possible explanations. Maybe he got spooked and stopped keeping records. Maybe the last six weeks of notes were in a different location and didn’t survive. Maybe he was taken earlier than everyone thinks, and the six-week gap is the period where he was already gone and I had no idea.
Or maybe they got to him before he could finish?
That’s the one that makes the most sense. He was getting close to something. The development officer, the property transfers, the shell companies. He was tightening the noose. Someone found out. Someone acted. And whatever happened, happened fast enough that Dad didn’t have time to write it down.
I gather the pages and slide everything back into the bag.
But the date stays with me. Six weeks. Six weeks of nothing from a man who documented everything. A man who wrote down every meeting, every number, every connection. A man whose pen pressed hard enough to dent the paper because that’s how seriously he took what he was doing.
Unless he didn’t just stop taking notes and something happened that either prevented him from writing or made him decide to stop.
I push the bag back under the bed, climb in next to Mara, and close my eyes.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter. The gap doesn’t change what the papers prove. Dad was clean. The corruption was real. The people who ran Rothwell were crooks who barely covered their tracks. That’s the story. The gap is just a missing chapter at the end of it.
But my brain won’t let it go.
Six weeks.
What happened in those six weeks, Dad?
46
STING
It happensin the work hub.
I’m there to check on a routine shipment, a task I could delegate but don’t because keeping my hands busy keeps my brain busy too. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, filling my hours with tasks that don’t need me so I have an excuse to be anywhere Vi isn’t.
Except today, she’s here.
