Chapter 5 - The Secrets in the Desk
While search parties combed the banks twenty miles downstream where the river fed into a massive reservoir, Officer Natalie returned to Andrew’s rental house with a search warrant and a mandate from child services to secure any vital family documents or legal guardianship papers.
The house felt entirely different now. Without Ashley’s quiet presence or Andrew’s looming exhaustion, it felt like a museum of a life interrupted mid-sentence.
Natalie walked into the small back bedroom that served as Andrew’s home office. A battered wooden desk sat beneath a window overlooking the overgrown backyard. Stacks of repair bills, auto parts catalogs, and medical statements were piled neatly in the corner.
She began opening drawers, looking for birth certificates and insurance policies.
In the bottom drawer, tucked beneath a bundle of old greeting cards from Sarah, lay a heavy, fireproof lockbox. It was unlocked. Natalie flipped the latches and lifted the lid.
Inside were Ashley’s birth certificate, Sarah’s death certificate, and a stack of medical bills stamped with past-due notices totaling thousands of dollars. But underneath the financial papers sat something else: a small, leather-bound journal with Andrew & Sarah embossed on the cover in faded silver lettering.
Curiosity—and a deep, aching need to understand the man behind the tragedy—prompted Natalie to open it. She flipped past the early years of their marriage, past the joyful entries when Ashley was born, until she reached the final entries written in Andrew’s heavy, hurried handwriting just weeks before.
October 14: The cough won't go away. Dr. Vance prescribed the new inhaler and the liquid antibiotic, but insurance is refusing to cover the specialty refill. I had to put it on the high-interest credit card. Working double shifts at the garage is killing my back, but I don't care. As long as my little girl can breathe easy, I’ll work twenty-four hours a day.
October 22: Someone keeps leaving anonymous notes on my truck at the shop telling me I need to put Ashley in state care, that I can't provide for her properly working the hours I do. Makes me sick to my stomach. They don't know anything. They don't know how she smiles when I bring home a box of cheap crayons. She’s my entire world. If I lost her, I wouldn't have any reason to wake up.
Natalie turned the page. The entry was dated just three days before the flood.
November 2: The storm warning is coming in heavy for the weekend. I need to stock up on groceries and refill her prescription before the roads wash out. She’s running a low-grade fever again. I’ll run out tonight after the night shift. Thirty minutes. In and out. Nothing’s going to keep me away from my girl.
Natalie closed the journal, her chest aching. Andrew hadn't been running from his responsibilities; he had been crushing under the weight of them, yet he never once faltered in his devotion to his daughter. The "monster" the neighborhood had whispered about was actually a father working himself to the grave for a seven-year-old girl.
As she placed the journal into an evidence bag for safekeeping, a sharp clink came from the bottom of the lockbox.
May you like
Natalie reached back inside and felt around the velvet lining. Her fingers brushed against something metallic. She pulled it out into the light.
It was a heavy, old-fashioned brass key with a red plastic tag attached to it. On the tag, written in permanent marker, were three words: The Old Mill.
