PART 4 — THE MAN AT THE WINDOW

“You?” I stared at Ben. “You were eight years old. Why would a man come looking for you in my bedroom?”
“Because Mom told him I slept there.”
I turned to Linda. She had taken my room for Ben. She had moved me into the sewing room, with its narrow bed and the loose floorboard beneath it.
“The man was your father?” I asked.
Ben nodded. “His name is Daniel Bell.”
“Bell,” I repeated. “The same name as Ruth.”
“Ruth is his sister. My aunt.”
Dad stared at Linda. “You told me Daniel had died before Ben was born.”
“I told you what I had to,” Linda said.

Ben flinched, but kept speaking. “Ruth found me last month. She showed me letters Dad wrote when I was little. Birthday cards. Proof he’d been trying to see me for years.”
A nurse knocked, opened the door a few inches, and asked if everything was all right. Dad said yes. She glanced at the four of us before leaving.
I wished I could follow her into the ordinary hallway, where people carried coffee and complained about parking. Instead, I took Mom’s photograph from my pocket.
“Why was my mother standing with Ruth?”
“Your mom worked at the county records office,” Ben said. “Ruth came to her for help. She believed Linda had lied to the court to keep Daniel away from me.”
Linda shook her head. “You have no idea what that man was like.”
“Then why tell me he was dead?” Ben asked.
She had no answer.
I looked again at the photograph. Mom was smiling. She had known Ruth. She had tried to help her. Then she had died, and Linda had married my father and moved into our house.
“How did you know Dad?” I asked Linda. “Before Mom died.”

Linda’s gaze flicked to the letter in my hand. “We lived in the same town.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Dad pushed himself up against the pillows. “She told me they met at a school fundraiser. Your mother came home upset that night. She wouldn’t say why.”
I searched the letter for the line I had stopped reading. My hands shook as I unfolded the last page.
I showed Ruth the copy I made. She says it’s enough to ask the court to reopen Ben’s case. I’m taking the original to her tomorrow. If Linda comes to the house, please don’t let her near our daughter.
The date at the bottom was the day before Mom died.
I read it aloud. Dad’s face went pale.
“You never showed me that part,” he said to Linda.

“I never saw the letter.”
“You found it,” he said. “You told me you’d put it somewhere safe.”
I lowered the page. “How did Mom die?”
Dad looked bewildered. “You know. She fell on the basement stairs.”
“She went down there to get a box,” I said, remembering the sound of Dad telling the police that evening. “You said the light had burned out.”
Ben reached into his jacket and took out his phone. “Ruth asked me to give you something.”
On the screen was a photograph of Mom’s basement stairs. At the bottom, beneath the handrail, a dark mark crossed the wall.
“What am I looking at?”
“Ruth found the photograph in the investigation file. There were more pictures, but this was the one she wanted you to see.”
Dad leaned toward the screen, squinting. “That mark?”
“Mom had painted those stairs the summer before she died,” I said. “She made me stay upstairs because the railing wasn’t dry.”

I remembered the smell of paint. Mom laughing when I threatened to leave my handprint on it. I remembered something else, too: after the funeral, Linda had painted over that stretch of wall. She told Dad it would make the basement feel less sad.
Ben swiped to the next image. It showed the same mark from closer up: four narrow scratches running downward through the paint.
“Ruth thinks Mom grabbed the wall when she fell,” he said.
“People do that,” Linda said.
“Yes,” Ben replied. “That’s why she asked for the rest of the file.”
Dad’s voice was barely audible. “What rest of the file?”
Ben looked at me, then at Linda. “There was a witness statement. Someone came to the house that afternoon and heard two women arguing in the basement.”
Linda gripped the foot of Dad’s bed. “That person was mistaken.”
“You know who it was?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
Ben turned his phone toward me again. The witness’s name was printed at the top of the statement.
I read it twice before I understood.
It was Dad’s name……………………..