Chapter 16 - THE NOTEBOOK UNDER THE HAYDiane Mercer agreed to meet Lucas in the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour diner.
She arrived wearing a hooded coat and dark glasses.
Her hands shook as she placed a bank envelope on the table between them.
“I didn’t know about the children,” she said.
Lucas did not touch the envelope.
“What did you know?”
“That Robert wanted money out of the farm before foreclosure.”
“You helped him move it.”
“He said Sarah was going to take everything in the divorce.”
“So you created a false consulting company?”
Diane looked away.
“He told me it was temporary.”
“What was your relationship with Robert?”
Diane’s silence answered.
Lucas opened the envelope.
Inside were account records and printed messages.
In one exchange, Robert instructed Diane to reserve a Kentucky motel under Sarah’s name.
In another, he asked how long police usually waited before considering an adult voluntarily missing.
Diane had responded, Longer if she takes clothes and the children.
Lucas felt a chill.
“What did he intend to do with them?”
“He never said.”
“What did you think?”
Diane’s eyes filled with tears.
“I thought he was going to leave them somewhere. A bus station, maybe. Then tell police Sarah abandoned him.”
“You continued helping.”
“I was afraid.”
Lucas held her gaze.
“So was Sarah.”
Diane lowered her head.
At the safe house, Sarah read copied pages from the black ledger.
Ninety thousand dollars.
The amount represented school clothes, medical bills and groceries Robert claimed they could not afford.
It represented every time Sarah blamed herself for the family’s financial problems.
“He made us go without food,” she said. “While he moved money into another account.”
Claire sat across from her.
“The financial evidence establishes motive. If you left and requested an accounting of the marriage, the transfers could be discovered.”
Sarah looked toward the girls’ room.
“So he needed me to disappear.”
“Or appear to disappear.”
Claire did not speculate further.
The criminal investigators would determine the plan.
Sarah returned to the red notebook.
She read her own entries until the words blurred.
On one page, she had written:
Emma asked why Daddy only breaks things that belong to us.
On another:
Lily says she can tell how dangerous the night will be by the way his truck enters the driveway.
Then:
Mia hides Ava’s toys before he comes home so he cannot step on them and become angry.
Sarah closed the book.
Robert had trained even the youngest children to organize their lives around his moods.
She had mistaken their quietness for resilience.
A knock sounded at the door.
Sarah jumped.
Hannah entered with Lucas.
He explained Diane’s cooperation.
Then he placed one copied message on the table.
Robert had sent it two hours before forcing the family into the stable.
Everything is ready. By tomorrow, people will believe she took them.
Sarah read it twice.
“Where did he plan to take us?”
“We don’t know.”
Emma appeared in the doorway.
She had heard the question.
“I do.”
Sarah turned.
Emma’s face was pale.
“Daddy drove me somewhere last week.”
“Where?”
“I thought we were buying horse feed.”
She described an abandoned livestock auction property thirty miles north of the farmhouse.
Robert had parked beside an empty office and asked whether Emma thought her sisters could sleep there.
Sarah stopped breathing.
“What did you say?”
“I told him it was scary.”
“What did he say?”
Emma’s voice became very small.
“He said we wouldn’t have to stay long if Mommy behaved.”
Lucas reached for his phone.
The auction property needed to be searched immediately.
Before he left, Emma caught his sleeve.
“There’s a green door behind the office.”
“How do you know?”
“Daddy opened it.”
“What was inside?”
May you like
Emma looked at her mother.
“Five chairs.”
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