Free Blood Ties by Jane A. Adams

peeked in once, years ago. I think if he’d known he’d have been really upset, but I only opened the door a fraction.’
    â€˜Well,’ Alec said. ‘I doubt we’ll find what we’re looking for in there. Where should we start, do you think?’
    â€˜He had a desk in the other front room,’ Susan said. ‘I guess we should start there.’
    With a last quick glance through the door, Alec began to close it and then something suddenly jarred and he took one last lingering look around the room. Dust covered everything, carpet included; it seemed impossible that anyone could have gone inside without disturbing it and leaving telltale footprints behind.
    What was it he had noticed? The urge to look again had been in response to something so tiny as to be almost subliminal, and it was only Alec’s experience, his habit of standing and just surveying a scene, that had caused it to register at all.
    He withdrew his gaze to that portion of the room that could be reached from the door. On a chair close by, a nightdress and dressing gown had been tossed – probably, he thought, on that last morning before Karen left. Both were cobwebbed and flocked with the same soft layer, except for just one small area, which showed signs of fairly recent disturbance, the gentle strata not lying so thickly. He could see the pocket on the pink dressing gown, edged with something silky and embroidered with bright purple flowers. It was the satin binding that he had noticed – the sheen of it, against the almost powdery covering of every other thing in the room.
    Alec could hear Susan’s footsteps on the stairs. She had paused, as though puzzled he had not followed. Alec held on to the door frame and leaned in, fingers touching the satin edging on the pocket and then feeling inside.
    At first he thought he might have been mistaken; there was nothing there. Then, ‘Got you,’ he whispered. He slipped what he had found in to his pocket – not sure why he didn’t want to share the discovery with Susan, only aware that there was the possibility Eddy had hidden it there and that his secret should be kept for just a little longer. Then he followed Susan back down the stairs.
    When Eddy had been a much younger man he had felt certain there was a solution to everything. Life had fallen into place for him. Good degree, good job, happy marriage, wonderful child, even though she’d been a little late coming on to the scene. From such a height of grace it seemed inevitable, in afterthought, that the fall should be so heavy and so far .
    Cancer, the doctor said. Then, that it had metastasized. Then, that there were only months, and then weeks – and nothing that had fallen so neatly into place before could compensate for the chaos that those few words had brought .
    Then, ‘I’m sorry sir, but your daughter Karen. There was a car accident. I’m afraid . . .’
    The fall from grace complete, and none of it of his making or in his power to change .
    Eddy disintegrated. There was no other word complete enough to explain what happened to him. He dissolved into the morass that was grief and loss and emptiness, and when he finally climbed his painful way back out again, it was as though that man of certainty he had been was a mere shadow of a memory .
    He wrote, ‘I have lost all purpose. I am empty, a vessel that has been spilled out on to the ground.’
    But he found something to fill that space. I’m not saying it was a good thing, just that this is what he did, and if I’d known all of it then I might have intervened. As it was, I knew Eddy now had something that was driving him, something that made it worth him getting up in the morning, and I told myself that it was his research. We joked about his treasure hunts and about what he’d do if he found his millions buried in some muddy field. If I’d known the truth, I think I would have acted