CHAPTER 6: THE MAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
Martin Voss refused to come inside.
He stayed beneath my porch light and twisted his car keys between his fingers.
He told me he had lived separately from Patricia for seventeen years.
They had never formally divorced.
“I left because she kept asking me to protect a lie,” he said.
“What lie?”
Martin looked over his shoulder toward her darkened house.
“I don’t know whether you know enough to hear the answer.”
I almost closed the door.
Instead, I showed him the photograph of Patricia beside Laurel.
He sat down on the porch step without being invited.
“I took this,” he said.
“At the cabin?”
“Yes.”
“Who is the little boy?”
He rubbed a hand across his mouth.
“His name was Owen.”
I waited.
“He belonged to a family Patricia helped,” Martin said.
“That was how she described it.”
“What family?”
Martin shook his head.
“A family she believed was dangerous to a child.”
I asked whether Laurel had gone to the cabin to help that boy.
Martin admitted she had.
He said there had been an argument on the night after the picture was taken.
Patricia wanted the boy moved somewhere nobody could find him.
Laurel wanted a lawyer and a legitimate custody hearing.
“They were both trying to help, but they disagreed about how,” he said.
“And my sister vanished the next day.”
Martin closed his eyes.
“I didn’t see her leave.”
He pulled a folded sheet from his coat.
It was a photocopy of an old letter written by my father.
In it, Thomas Mercer asked Martin to stop sending him anonymous updates about Owen.
“Your father knew the boy’s situation was real,” Martin said.
“He believed he was protecting someone by paying those bills.”
I asked why Martin had waited until now to speak.
“Because Patricia called me this morning,” he answered.
“She said your father had finally sent the last envelope, and she couldn’t get to it in time.”
