Chapter 17 - The Things Dan Remembered
Dan did not answer immediately when I asked about the records.
He stood beside the workshop sink, washing grease from a wrench. Water ran over his fingers long after the tool was clean.
“Dan?”
“I’m thinking.”
Tobias leaned against the workbench. Neither of us hurried him.
At last, Dan shut off the tap.
“Your mother gave me a biscuit tin two days before the wreck. Said it held things she didn’t want misplaced.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did you do with it?”
“Put it in your father’s old drafting cabinet. After the funeral, everything from his office went into storage.”
We found the cabinet in a locked room above the pattern shop. Its drawers smelled of cedar and paper. The tin sat behind rolled drawings of a tugboat that had never been built.
Inside were photographs, laboratory correspondence, and a small notebook in Mother’s handwriting.
Dan sat down when he saw it.
“I thought it was personal,” he whispered. “After everything happened, I couldn’t bring myself to open it.”
For years, he had remembered our parents through the promises he believed he had kept. Now I watched him discover one he had forgotten.
I placed my hand over his.
“We have it.”
Mother’s notebook contained dates and observations. She had recorded unusual smells near the basin, workers’ complaints, and inconsistencies between delivery receipts and disposal certificates.
On the final written page, she had listed three questions for an attorney.
Beneath them was a name: Helen Ward.
Our counsel located Helen that afternoon. Retired now, she remembered Mother immediately.
“Eleanor brought me copies,” she said during our conference call. “I advised her to obtain independent testing and preserve the originals.”
“Did she tell you someone was threatening her?” I asked.
“She said a contractor had warned her that raising concerns could cost the yard its financing. She was worried about the employees.”
The words settled heavily over the room.
Even at the end, Mother had been calculating how to protect people whose names never appeared on ownership papers.
Helen agreed to search her archived files. Our attorney arranged the next steps, and I asked Dan to stay after everyone else left.
“I should have remembered,” he said.
“You remembered today.”
“That’s a generous way to count fifteen years.”
I had no answer that could make those years smaller.
Instead, I asked him to help me label the photographs. We worked until the workshop lights came on below us.
When my phone vibrated, it was a message from Miriam.
May you like
Saturday at ten works for Noah’s foster mother. A quiet visit at her home, if you’re still comfortable.
I typed yes before fear could turn a simple meeting into another impossible calculation.
