Chapter 7 - WHAT HELEN KNEW
Helen's letter was not a confession or a murder accusation. It was a mother trying to explain to a young son why the people he loved might soon live in different homes. She wrote that Dominic could be tender and frightening in the same day, that affection did not make control acceptable, and that Caleb was never responsible for keeping adults together. She promised that wherever they lived, he would have books, his favorite blue blanket, and a place to plant tomatoes like the ones outside the kitchen window.
Halfway through the letter, Caleb stopped reading. He pressed the paper to his chest and signed: She knew I would blame myself. For fourteen years he had wondered whether a childhood argument, a spilled drink, or some forgotten disobedience had made his mother stay in the house that night. Her written assurance did not dissolve the grief, but it gave him a sentence to hold against it. Whatever happened, it was not his fault. He asked Rebecca for a private room and took an hour alone with the letter.
The accountant's files were more complicated. They documented a dispute over company funds that Helen believed Dominic's associates had moved without her consent. Several transfers passed through North Pier Services, including one marked as urgent infrastructure work at the lake property. Another file indicated that Helen had intended to meet regulators or law enforcement regarding suspected financial misconduct. Nothing in the documents proved she had reported anyone, nor did it prove the explosion was planned. Still, the pattern made the earlier accident finding impossible to accept without further scrutiny.
Rebecca contacted the relevant authorities, submitted the available records, and requested a formal review. She reminded Caleb that public accusations could prejudice the inquiry and expose him to legal retaliation. He agreed not to leak the files or invite the press into the story. But he wanted to speak to Dominic in a controlled setting, not to negotiate the evidence, but to ask why his mother's letters had been withheld. “He can lie about the money,” Caleb signed. “I want to see whether he lies about her loving me.”
They met at Rebecca's office. Dominic arrived with his own attorney and looked insulted by the presence of an interpreter until Rebecca explained that this was not negotiable. Caleb sat opposite him with Helen's letter folded inside his coat. I waited in the reception area at Caleb's request; this was a conversation between father and son. Through the glass I could see Dominic speaking too fast, the interpreter asking him to slow down, and Caleb holding his ground with an expression I'd never seen at Bellamy's.
After nearly an hour, Caleb emerged exhausted but steady. He told me what he wanted to share. Dominic admitted that Helen had planned to leave him and that he had kept her letters from Caleb because he believed they would make the boy hate him. Caleb had asked how hiding his mother's love was supposed to protect him. Dominic apparently had no convincing answer. On the financial transfers, Dominic insisted North Pier was a legitimate contractor and accused Helen's accountant of misunderstanding the accounts. He refused to explain why the lake house had been emptied.
Caleb's next choice surprised me. He didn't demand that his father be arrested on the spot. He requested the release of his personal trust records, access to his mother's belongings, and an agreement that Dominic's employees would stop monitoring his movements. He also asked for his father's participation in a facilitated meeting only after both lawyers confirmed the conditions. “I can investigate him,” Caleb signed, “without letting the investigation become my entire life.”
That night Dominic's attorney sent Rebecca a partial list of family-company transactions. Two payments to North Pier had been approved by an executive other than Dominic. The executive's name was Victor Sloane, the estate manager who had sent Iris home early on the night of the explosion. Rebecca had been looking at him as a potential witness. The records now made him a person whose decisions required independent examination.
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Dr. Ortiz's follow-up report raised a second issue. The photographed equipment beside the utility room appeared to have been installed improperly, though the surviving material couldn't establish whether that caused the explosion. The report distinguished between a deliberate act, negligent work, and an accidental failure. Caleb read each possibility carefully. His father's responsibility, he realized, might involve more than a single act and could be complicated by what others had done.
Just before midnight, Rebecca received a call from a man claiming to be a former North Pier employee. He said he possessed the original service log from the final week before the blast. He would speak to investigators, he said, but only after Caleb was warned: Victor Sloane had been instructed to destroy one particular page.
