“Your father-in-law gave me that years ago,” he said. “I never opened it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was afraid of what was on it.”
There it was. Not denial. Not confusion. Fear.
Ms. Reyes took the drive carefully, called for the case agent, and the room filled with a quiet urgency. Evidence bags appeared. Forms were signed. My father answered questions in a low voice that seemed to drain him with every response.
Before they left, he turned to me.
“I failed you,” he said.
The words were plain. No excuses wrapped around them.
I waited for anger to rise. It did, but not alone. Beneath it was grief, and beneath grief was a tired kind of love I did not know what to do with.
“Yes,” I said.
He nodded once, accepting the sentence like a verdict.
Court began late that morning.
Ethan looked different when he entered. He was still dressed perfectly, still clean-shaven, still composed for anyone who didn’t know him. But I knew him. His eyes moved too often. To the prosecutors. To our parents. To me.
Ms. Reyes requested a sidebar almost immediately.
The judge listened, frowned, and called a recess.
Whispers spread.
Ethan’s attorney turned sharply toward him. Ethan shook his head, but the attorney’s expression said he had stopped believing in easy explanations.
In the hallway, Ms. Reyes told me the USB drive contained audio files.
“From Granddad?” I asked.
“It appears so. We’re authenticating them.”
“What’s on them?”
She hesitated. “Conversations.”
“With Ethan?”
“With several people.”
Before she could say more, a marshal approached. “Ms. Reyes, the defense is asking to discuss a possible stipulation.”
She left quickly.
I stood near a window with my parents a few feet away. The silence between us was no longer empty. It was crowded with everything we had not said.
My mother came to my side.
“I used to imagine you somewhere far away,” she said. “I told myself you were happier without us. That made it easier.”
“I wasn’t happier,” I said. “I was surviving.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “I’m sorry.”
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