“I know.” But his voice told me he hadn’t known when the man said it.
Officer Patel asked, “Did he give you his name?”
Ethan nodded. “He told me to call him Uncle Derek.”
For a second, I couldn’t speak. Derek was Ryan’s older brother.
Ethan had met him, but he was six the last time we’d seen him.
Derek hadn’t attended Ryan’s funeral. Ryan had made me promise before he died that Derek wasn’t welcome, and afterward Derek disappeared from our lives.
Ryan and Derek had stopped speaking about a year before Ryan died.
Ryan only called it “family money stuff.”
Near the end, he’d made me promise not to let Derek back into our lives, but I thought that was about their feud.
I never knew there was evidence behind it.
Now Derek was approaching our son outside school.
Without telling me.
Officer Patel’s partner returned from outside and quietly asked him to come to the porch. A minute later, Patel called me over.
