Page 59 of Silent Betrayal

“Fair enough,” he says with a sigh as he nods. “It all started before you were even born. I met your mother and fell for her instantly. It was love at first sight. We had some good times together over the next couple of years. Then she got pregnant. I was ecstatic, I’ve always wanted to be a dad. She gave birth to your brother, Simon.” He looks at me, and I nod, confirming I know who he is, unfortunately.

“He was a cute kid. A little troublesome, but what you’d expect from a toddler. When he started daycare, there were always complaints of him picking on other kids, biting them, or pushing them around, pulling girls’ hair. I figured it was just a phase. The behavior seemed to calm down as he got a little older, but I soon realized he had just learned to hide it. Sometimes I’d find him outside playing with dead animals. It was more than a little creepy, but I was more worried about disease than the reasons he did it. Whenever I talked to Helen about it, she just said that boys will be boys.

“There was an incident at school where he broke another kid’s arm. They weren’t even fighting or fooling around. The other kids who saw it said the kid was begging him to stop, but he just held his arm out over the edge of the playground for a couple of minutes, listening to him beg, before snapping it backward with a smile on his face.

“I told your mother we needed to get him some help, get him to a shrink, but she kept refusing. I told her I’d leave if she didn’t let me get him help. The stress of raising Simon drove me to drink.” He looks away from me with guilt written all over his face.

“I seemed to need to get drunk just to get through any time I spent at home. Your mother and I weren’t even sleeping in the same room anymore. I refused to get closer to her because she refused to get Simon some help. One night, I must have gotten so drunk that I—Uh, well, you know—We got together. Now, I’m sure she did it on purpose. She wanted a way to keep me there. And it worked… for a time.

“It was only a few weeks later when she told me she was pregnant. When we found out it was going to be a girl, I was so excited. I tried to push Simon out of my mind for a bit. But he was still doing things, I just turned a blind eye to it.

“When you were born, and I held you for the first time, it was the happiest moment of my life. I named you Mina, because I knew you were special, that you were mine. As happy as I was when Simon was born, it didn’t feel the same. You were just this tiny, perfect little doll.

“As you started walking and talking, I saw the differences between you, how sweet and perfect you were. I started to notice how your mother treated you differently. She wasn’t mean to you necessarily, but she seemed a little cold and distant. She refused to breastfeed you, telling me the doctor advised against it, saying she wasn’t producing enough milk.

“When you were five, I overheard her on the phone with someone. She said something that led me to believe that Simon wasn’t my son, that she had cheated on me. So, I secretly got a DNA test done on Simon and found out he wasn’t my kid.”

I gasp at that. Simon’s my half-brother?

“I wasn’t sure if I should be happy he wasn’t mine, or mad that she cheated on me. I didn’t confront her right away, as I needed to decide what to do. I knew I couldn’t leave you, but I also couldn’t live with them. I’ll admit I made a lot of mistakes back then. I drank even more after that news, unsure how to get full custody of you.

“About a year later, I caught Simon killing a neighbor’s cat. It was awful. I’m not completely ignorant, I know what kind of people murder innocent animals. That’s when I decided I had to fight for custody of you. I saw a lawyer, but they said I’d have to get sober to have any chance at winning. I stopped drinking that day, but they say to be sure I’d win the case, I’d need to go through a recovery program to prove I’m doing well.

“The day I left for rehab is the day I told you I had something important to do and that I’d be back for you. I told Helen I was doing the recovery program, but not why I was doing it. But I think she somehow found out about my meeting with the lawyer, because when I got out six months later, you were all gone.”

We all sit there in silence for a minute, absorbing that pile of information.

“I’ve been looking for you ever since, honey. Posting your picture in every sheriff’s station around the country that I can get to. Searching hospitals, morgues. The police had a warrant out for Helen, but, as you know, they could never find her.”

“Thank you for looking for me. I wish you found me,” I say softly.

“Me too, honey. Why don’t you tell me your story now?”

“Do you mind if we ask you a couple of questions first?” Ben asks, with his laptop open on the table in front of him.

My dad stares at him suspiciously before finally nodding.

“I can’t find any record of Simon’s birth. Do you know why that is? Or who his birth father is?”

He frowns at Ben before relaxing his expression. “You seem to know a lot about our family, are you a cop or something?”

“Maybe I am, does it matter?” Ben asks with the lift of an eyebrow. My dad’s gaze darts around to each man before landing on me, and his expression softens before he looks back at Ben.

“No, I don’t know who his father is or why you can’t find a record of him. He went to school, so Helen must have had a birth certificate for him, but I can’t say I ever remember seeing it.” We all knew how good my mother was at forging school documents, somehow, so that wasn’t really surprising.Confusing? Yes.

“Will you tell me where you’ve been all this time now, honey? What’s happened?” he asks gently.

“You know a lot of it already. You know Mom kept me locked up and moved us around all the time. When we moved here a couple months ago, she had me start high school. She kept telling me I’m seventeen, not twenty-one.”

“Why would she do that?” he asks, and I shrug.

“That’s a good question,” Tucker pipes in. “We never considered why Helen changed her pattern this time.”

“Go on,” my dad encourages me to continue.

“Well, that’s where I meet these guys,” I say, motioning to the men around me. “I didn’t know at the time, but they’re undercover, following a serial killer. And we’re pretty sure it’s Simon.”

He gasps. “Oh my god! Wait—Have youseenSimon?” he asks, looking confused.

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