She Took the Rags, I Took the Empire novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: His Father's Name
Elias came back with two glasses of water and stopped in the doorway.
I was standing at his folding table with the sheet around me, looking at a photograph of my father's car.
He put the glasses down on the floor very slowly.
"I was going to tell you," he said.
"When?"
"When I could prove it. When you wouldn't walk straight back to Leopold and ask him."
"You think I'd do that?"
"I thought you were his daughter."
"I am his daughter," I said. "On paper. For eighteen years. He taught me to ride a bike."
"I know."
"So why is there a folder with my school photo and the word PETHICK?"
He sat down on the edge of the mattress.
He looked tired and unguarded, and he spoke to the floor.
"My father was a state trooper," he said.
"Eighteen years ago he was the first officer at a crash on Route 9. A silver sedan went off a ravine with two adults inside."
"The report said brake failure from wear."
"That's what they told us."
"He took photographs of the brake line before the tow truck came," Elias said.
"It had been cut with a hacksaw, about two-thirds through. The car held until the first long curve."
I sat down on the floor, because my legs had stopped working.
"He filed it as suspicious," Elias said.
"Within a week the file was closed and he was moved to a desk in the records room. He drank for years after that, and he died when I was twenty-nine."
"I'm sorry."
"The name on the car registration was Pethick. He was the co-founder of Pethick and Ellingham Hotels."
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