My hands curled into fists.
“She said that?”
Thomas nodded. “And I believed she could do it.”
“She could,” Daniel said quietly.
My father looked at me.
“I was angry enough to fight anyway. Then Evelyn told me Jason had contacts investigating old grant money from my school program. She implied they could accuse me of misusing funds. It wasn’t true, but it would have destroyed the program and dragged your mother into years of legal trouble.”
“So you disappeared?” Clara asked, pulling away from him.
His face crumpled.
“No. Not at first. I tried to get help. I contacted an attorney. Two days later, I was in a car accident.”
Daniel’s expression sharpened.
“Accident?”
Thomas looked at the floor of the old observatory.
“I woke in a private clinic three towns away. Evelyn was there. She told me I was lucky to be alive. She told me the official record would say I had died, and that if I stayed dead, my family would be financially protected. If I came back, everything Jason had built around Iris would collapse onto her first.”
