Chapter 10
The original recording belonged to my father.
Sarah had found it after Frank Carter died.
He had kept one box from the arrangement that brought Sarah into his home.
Inside was an old voice recorder.
My father’s voice.
Vincent’s too.
Sarah had transferred it onto a memory card.
We listened at the farmhouse kitchen table.
My father sounded younger.
Angrier.
“Sarah is my daughter.”
Vincent replied, “And Daniel is your heir.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“In this family, eventually they are.”
Silence.
Then my father:
“You leave her alone.”
Vincent laughed.
“You’re asking me to protect a secret that could split the family in half.”
“I’m asking you to protect a child.”
The room went still.
Sarah looked down.
She had never heard the full recording before copying it.
My father continued.
“If anything happens to me, Sarah stays Carter until she chooses otherwise. Daniel gets the chair. Sarah gets freedom.”
Vincent answered.
“And when Daniel finds out?”
“He decides what she is to him.”
That line hurt.
My father had hidden Sarah.
Wrong.
But at least near the end, he understood one thing.
The choice belonged to us.
Vincent did not.
His voice hardened on the recording.
“You’re making him vulnerable.”
My father laughed.
“No.”
“Family is vulnerability.”
“No, Vincent.”
A pause.
“Family is the reason power matters.”
I looked at my uncle.
He stared at the table.
For thirty years, he had lived by the opposite belief.
Power first.
Family managed around it.
The recording ended with my father saying:
“If you ever use that girl to protect your position beside Daniel, you were never loyal to either of them.”
Nobody spoke.
Vincent’s face aged ten years in front of me.
May you like
Not because my father condemned him.
Because my father had predicted him exactly.
