Page 74 of Old Fashioned
My jaw hinged open, and my eyes found his, mirroring the terror I saw reflected in them.
“Patrick knew,” he continued. “My dad wrote in that last entry that he’d gone to him, that he’d told him and showed him the Will and everything.”
“So Patrickknowsabout it?”
“He knows,” Jordan confirmed. “And he told my dad he wanted to rectify it immediately, make him partner, announce it to the whole board and the company and pay our family what we were owed. All of that.”
I shook my head, so confused that I ached all over trying to reach for understanding. “I don’t get it. If he knew, if it was all right there in the Will—”
“He told my father he was giving him Robert’s old office,” Jordan continued.
“The one he’d been cleaning out, right? Where he found the Will?”
Jordan nodded. “Exactly. He said that it’s what his father would have wanted, and he told my dad to meet him there after their four o’clock board meeting to discuss next steps.” Jordan’s face went ashen. “He wrote in the entry that he’d already packed up some of his things to move over, that he couldn’t wait to get home to tell Mom.” He swallowed. “To tell all of us.”
My hands ripped from where they were holding Jordan’s, and I shook my head in disbelief. “No…”
“Yes,” Jordan said, and he spoke the words out loud that I knew we were both thinking, but I was too afraid to breathe to life. “Sydney, I think Patrick Scooter murdered my father.”
Those words hung between us like the razor-sharp blades of a thousand knives, like if either of us moved a single centimeter, we’d be sliced to ribbons.
I couldn’t be sure how long the silence stretched between us with my vision fading in and out of blackness before I leaned back, letting out a long, cooling breath and pressing a hand to my forehead.
“I know,” he said. “It’s a lot. I think this is why Dad was writing his entries in Latin. I think he was covering his tracks, in case someone found his files and tried to read them.”
I shook my head, speechless.
“And I need to tell my brothers,” he continued. “But… I couldn’t tell them yet. Not today. Not when we’re celebrating Noah and Ruby Grace.”
“When will you tell them?”
“Tomorrow,” he said, definitively. “At least, I think. I mean, I don’t know how I could sit on this any longer. It’s not proof, by any means,” he admitted. “But… it’ssomething, right? It’s written evidence that Patrick knew about the Will, that he has never told us about it even though he knew, and that he’d asked my father to meet him in that office on the evening of his death.” He shook his head. “I’m no lawyer, but I’d say there’s a leg to stand on there somewhere.”
My gut twisted, and I sat upright, facing Jordan again as I steeled myself. “Jordan, there’s something I need to tell you. Something that… oh, God,” I said, tears flooding my eyes as I pressed my hand to my forehead again. “Something I can’t be entirely sure of, but that I feel like I have to tell you.”
His brows bent together, and he pulled my hands into his again. “What is it?”
I blew out a breath, holding onto the next. “That night… the night of the fire. I… I was pregnant, and Randy came home late, and he was talking on the phone to someone in the kitchen, and… I don’t remember everything, okay? And it’s all a little fuzzy and I don’t know if this evenmeansanything, and—”
“What did you hear, Sydney?”
I swallowed. “He was just… he was soangrywhen I asked him questions. I wanted to know how that was the only room in the whole distillery that burned, how your dad was the only one who died. And I didn’t understand it being caused by a cigarette, you know? I mean, was he sleeping? Or so focused on something that he didn’t see it catch fire? And when it did, wouldn’t he have fled the room? Like… was itlocked?”
“These are all the questions my family and I have plagued ourselves with foryears.For an entire decade.”
“I know,” I said, and my voice was strangled with emotion. “And… Jordan, I swear I heard him on that phone call… I heard him say something abouthomicide.”
Jordan’s face washed over, all emotion gone before his nostrils flared and he scowled hard. “Youheardthat?”
“I think… No, I mean, IknowI did. Yes.”
For a long moment, he was quiet, and I wondered if he was angry with me. But then, he smiled, shaking his head as he released my hands to run his back through his hair.
“Sydney… do you know what this means? Wehavesomething. We have my dad’s entry, and now, your testimony. This is it. We can get a lawyer, we can—”
“Testimony?” I echoed, already shaking my head. “Jordan, I can’t… I can’t testify against Randy.”
Jordan’s frown grew. “Why the hell not?”
