Page 39 of Absolution

“Tell me, Damon. If you know someone committed murder, and you don’t bother to tell anyone, is that a mortal sin?”

“If this is about what you saw me do, I can arrange to have Father Ruiz take your confession.”

“This isn’t about that.” Her neck bobs with a swallow, giving me a sense her preoccupation has nothing to do with me, or the death of her grandmother.

“What is it?”

Hands fidgeting in her lap, she keeps her gaze directed away from mine. “A few years back, Calvin showed up to my work, asking me for the medical record of a man who ended up on the news three days later.” She clears her throat, and I catch the slight tremble of her entwined fingers. “Murdered.”

“And you feel responsible.”

“He was from New York, staying at a hotel downtown,” she continues, ignoring my comment. “Had some shortness of breath, so he came to the ER. His record detailed where he was staying.” Her brow flickers, and she clamps her eyes shut, chest rising with a deep breath. “I provided that information to a man I firmly believe showed up at that hotel and killed him.”

I slow the car to a stop across from her apartment building and kill the engine. Whether the girl is a masochist, or just naturally dominated by her conscience, she can’t seem to stop punishing herself.

Running a hand down my face, I huff. “Ivy, your grandmother just passed away. Just … focus on yourself right now. Don’t trouble your mind with things you can’t change.”

Her head snaps in my direction, brows knitted with a caustic expression. “Trouble my mind? This has been eating at me for years now. Years, Damon. And there’s more.” Chin jutted, she directs her attention toward my chest. “Open my grandmother’s letter. Read it.”

“I plan to read it later.”

Eyes brimming with protest, she stares back at me. “No. Now. Read it right now.”

“Ivy, c’mon—”

“Now! Read it right now!”

Gaze locked on hers, I sneak my hand inside my pocket and pull the note from inside, opening it up to a handwritten letter, addressed to:Dear Father.

In the event I’m not able to confess my sins before death, I feel compelled to cleanse my soul by divulging something that was told to me many years ago. Due to my slowly declining health, I find it necessary to capture my thoughts while I still have my wits about me, and am of sound mind to relay them to my most trusted caretaker, Anita. I’ve kept this to myself for a long time, for fear of what might happen to my only love in the world, my only granddaughter, Ivy Mercier. But I refuse to let this secret follow me to the grave, and so you may take this as my last confession.

First, you must understand, my granddaughter has always been a very happy child, so even through my own malady, I could see something was troubling her. Through tears, she described a man who had come to her work, demanding that she hand over the medical record for a man named Richard Rosenberg. I will never forget his name because what transpired next was a series of very unfortunate events. Not three days after her releasing the man’s record, Mr. Rosenberg showed up dead. Tortured to death and discarded in a dumpster outside of his hotel. Ivy expressed sincere regret and remorse, feeling responsible for the man’s death, and she’s been punishing herself for years since. Though I urged her to go to the police with the information at the time, she told me this Calvin, who demanded the record from her, threatened to kill both of us, if she said a word to anyone. I later learned from a friend of mine, who works at that hotel and had overheard the investigators talking, that this Richard Rosenberg was here on behalf of his client, to secure a witness who might testify against a known criminal. A man by the name of Anthony Savio.

In a brief pause, I stare down at my father’s name written across the page, and suddenly the letter takes on new meaning. This isn’t just a confession at this point, or the mention of a lawyer whose contact information was stored in my dead wife’s phone, but the pieces to a puzzle that have eluded me for the last eight years. It begs me to keep reading.

A few days after Richard Rosenberg’s body was recovered, the daughter-in-law and granddaughter of Anthony Savio were found dead in their home. It is my belief that Calvin was responsible for the lawyer’s murder, and possibly that of the woman and child. He is an evil man who has taken it upon himself to make my granddaughter’s life miserable. I want to make it known to God that my granddaughter, Ivy, is innocent and deserves absolution for the sins she has committed.

God Bless,

Adele Mercier

Cold branches of rage snake through my veins as I stare down at the letter in my hands.

“I didn’t know it was your family until tonight.” Ivy’s voice is a dissonant chime beneath the swish of blood pounding through my ears. A disconnected sound that fails to draw me out of the images passing through my mind, too fast for my brain to keep up.

Visuals of the card I pulled out of Val’s phone case with the lawyer’s number. A hotel room written on the back. The few times before her death when I tried to reach her, and she didn’t answer my call. Her preoccupation that I must’ve mistaken for worry over the cost of Isabella’s treatments. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“Is your father Anthony Savio?”

“Yes.”

“From what I’ve gathered, Richard Rosenberg was the lawyer who came to secure a witness against him. They found a broken digital recorder and an empty briefcase in the lawyer’s hotel room. I’m guessing whatever they had on him was destroyed. And I’m pretty sure Calvin, or someone working with him, killed him.”

A sniffle draws my attention toward Ivy, who wipes tears from her cheek.

“There’s something else. On one of the nights I stayed with Calvin, I was nosing through his things while he was passed out, just looking for any information I could find. Not that it mattered, but I needed to know. I needed to know if he killed that lawyer. I found a picture of your wife and daughter with an address clipped to it. I recognized them from the news report after the murder.”

“No. The police … they told me it was a break in.” Even as the words tumble from my lips, I knew back then it was a lie. One I’ve never believed, yet right now, I find myself clinging to it, if only for the sake of my sanity, because the picture Ivy’s painting is too hard to look at. “Val wouldn’t have testified against my father.”

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