No, that was what it contained.
I found what I was looking for and went back to the kitchen, where Ben and my father sat like a couple of kids who knew they’d get what-for if they got up from their seats without the babysitter’s permission.”
“Let’s talk about these.”
I slapped the folder down on the table in front of my father. Inside were the canceled checks I’d found months ago when I was going through my grandmother’s papers after she and my mother disappeared. All those checks had been made out to Finn Lowell and were signed by Emily Thompson. They went back for years and years.
My father glanced at the folder but didn’t open it. “You found those.”
“Yes, I found them.” I pulled out a chair and sat down across from him, with Ben at my right hand. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, all made out to you. At first, I thought maybe it was some kind of support payment, like maybe you’d worked out an arrangement with Grandma after you left. But then I started thinking about it more, and I realized the timing didn’t make sense.”
My father didn’t respond. Instead, he only sat there, waiting.
“The checks started six months before you left,” I continued. “And they kept coming, regular as clockwork, for years afterward. Ten thousand dollars every month. A lot more than you would have been getting for alimony…well, unless you were making a whole lot less as an accountant than I thought.” I leaned forward then, forcing him to meet my eyes. “So what was it? Blackmail? Did you threaten to expose what the women in our family could do unless Grandma paid you off?”
A flash of shock showed in his dark eyes. “Is that really what you thought?”
“What else was I supposed to think?” I returned. “You left without any explanation, and then I found out that my grandmother was sending you big chunks of money for years. What would you have concluded from all that?”
He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was now almost hesitant. “I suppose I would have concluded the same thing.”
“So it was blackmail.”
“No.” He shook his head, the movement emphatic. “Sidney, no. It was never blackmail. The money was payment for services rendered.”
This was crazy. “What services?”
Finn glanced at Ben, then back at me. “Your grandmother hired me to set up a surveillance network around Silver Hollow so I could monitor for threats before they could get close enough to do any damage. The checks you found were my operating budget.”
I stared at him. Of all the explanations I’d imagined, that sure as hell hadn’t been one of them.
“Grandma hired you,” I said slowly. “To spy on…what, exactly?”
“On anyone who showed too much interest in Silver Hollow or the forest or your family.” He paused for a second or two before adding, “People like Ben, before I determined he wasn’t a threat.”
I looked over at Ben, who gave me a small nod. Apparently, they’d already covered this part of the conversation outside.
“Grandma never mentioned any of this,” I said. A weak defense, I supposed, but I hated the idea that she’d kept so much from me. The women in my family were supposed to keep our secrets from the outside world, not from each other.
“She wouldn’t have,” my father replied. “The whole point was to keep you and your mother insulated from that side of things. You had enough to worry about. Emily didn’t want you to have to think about the human threats on top of everything else.”
“So she just — what? Outsourced that part to you?”
“In a manner of speaking.” My father pressed his lips together, and for a few seconds, I wasn’t sure if he intended to continue. But then he said, “It wasn’t supposed to be permanent. When I first left, I thought I’d be gone for a year, maybe two. Just long enough to set up the network and train someone else to run it. But then things got complicated.”
I knew all about complicated. “Complicated how?”
He was silent for a few beats, his dark eyes distant. Outside, the green lightning flickered, and I felt the Dragon’s presence pulse beneath my feet — that banked heat, that ancient patience.
“I started detecting precursor signs,” he said at last. “Small fluctuations in the portal’s energy signature, that is. At first, I thought it might be equipment error, since it wasn’t as if I was trained in any of this, but the readings were consistent across multiple sensors.” He looked at me then, and his expression was bleak. “Something was changing, Sidney. The portal was becoming unstable, years before any of the recent events. I couldn’t come back and risk being a liability when I had no idea what might be coming.”
“A ‘liability,’” I repeated. “You keep using that word.”
Still with that bleak look on his face, he said, “Because that’s what I am. What I’ve always been.” He spread his hands on the table, and I noticed for the first time how weathered they looked, how scarred, as if from innumerable small cuts. “I’m a mundane. I don’t have any abilities or any connection to the portal network. If someone wanted to get to you or your mother or Emily, I would have been the obvious weak point. The easiest target.”
“So you decided the best way to protect us was to abandon us.”
Harsh, and maybe I should have tried to find a more diplomatic way to say those words. Then again, why should I be diplomatic with the man who’d walked out the door when I was ten years old? Right then, I didn’t give a good goddamn what his reasoning might have been.