Part 5
We didn't stop running until we reached the boathouse, soaked again, this time from rain instead of the river.
"They'll check the cameras," Julian said, pacing. "If Derek finds out someone accessed that archive room tonight —"
"He'll know we're alive."
"He'll know someone is alive. He won't know it's us. Not yet."
I didn't share his confidence, but I didn't have a better plan, so I let it stand.
Three days later, Julian's contact at the morgue confirmed the unidentified body had been logged under Vivian and Julian's names, pending "final" dental confirmation that would conveniently take another two weeks. Derek received the notification that afternoon. Julian had eyes on the house — a former Marine he'd served with, watching from a parked utility van down the block.
Derek didn't cry.
He opened a bottle of wine.
Two hours later, Serena arrived, and through a long-range lens, Julian's friend photographed them toasting on the back porch, her hand resting on her stomach.
I looked at those photos for a long time.
Then I called the one person Derek had never accounted for: my father's old attorney, Harold Weiss, who had drafted the shipyard's original ownership trust and who Derek had always dismissed as a harmless relic too old to matter.
Harold answered on the second ring.
"Vivian," he said, like he'd been expecting the call for fifteen years. "I think it's time you saw your father's real will."
“My husband drove the car into the river with my brother and me trapped inside.”
