PART 5
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“She didn’t want you to know.”
“I was twenty-four.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t a child.”
“I told her that.”
“Not hard enough.”
Dad absorbed the words.
He didn’t defend himself.
That somehow made it harder to stay angry.
“She wanted you living your life,” he said.
“You had just started at the Calder.
You were happy.
She was afraid that if you knew, you would stop everything and come home.”
“I would have.”
“I know.”
“That should have been my choice.”
“Yes.”
The word stopped me.
Dad lowered his eyes.
“Yes,” he repeated.
“It should have been.”
For several moments, the only sound in the room was the clock on the mantel.
Then he pushed the ledger toward me.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at the blue cover.
“For which part?”
“For helping her keep that from you.”
He sat down.
“And for waiting twelve years to admit that it was wrong.”
I wanted to be furious.
Part of me was.
But another part saw something I had rarely allowed myself to see.
My father was not only my father.
He had been a husband losing his wife.
Maybe frightened people made mistakes even when they were trying to protect someone.
I had spent years making excuses for Grant.
I didn’t want to start making excuses for Dad.
But understanding was different from excusing.
“I wish you had told me.”
“I know.”
“I lost months with her.”
His eyes filled.
“So did I.”
That changed the room.
I sat opposite him.
For the first time that night, we were not father and daughter standing on opposite sides of a secret.
We were two people who missed the same woman.
I opened the ledger.
My mother’s handwriting filled the pages.
Small.
Elegant.
Precise.
But it wasn’t a diary.
It was a record.
Dates.
Company names.
Investments.
Trusts.
Property.
Charitable foundations.
Notes beside each entry.
Some names I recognized from Dad’s business.
Others meant nothing to me.
“What was she doing?”
“Keeping track.”
“Of what?”
“Our family assets.”
I looked at him.
“Mom did this?”
Dad smiled faintly.
“Your mother understood numbers better than I ever did.”
“You never told me that.”
“You never asked.”
“I thought she ran the foundation.”
“She did.
She also helped build Vance Capital.”
That stunned me.
Whenever newspapers profiled Arthur Vance, they described him as a self-made businessman.
My mother appeared in photographs beside him, elegant and smiling.
The wife.
The philanthropist.
The hostess.
“She helped build the company?”
“Half the early investment decisions were hers.”
“Why wasn’t her name on anything?”
“It was on plenty.”
“I mean publicly.”
Dad leaned back.
“Because she didn’t want it there.”
That sounded like my mother.
She had never cared who received credit.
I turned another page.
There were handwritten notes beside several trusts.
Then I saw my name.
Claire Elizabeth Vance — Family Trust
Below it were dates stretching back to my childhood.
“This is the trust Harbor Eight supposedly belongs to.”
Dad leaned closer.
“No.”
I looked at him.
“No?”
“This trust was closed.”
“When?”
“After your mother died.”
“Why?”
“Estate restructuring.
Its assets were transferred into a new trust under updated terms.”
He reached for a folder from the safe and opened it.
“This is the termination document.”
I scanned the page.
The date was eleven years ago.
“If this trust doesn’t exist, how can it own Harbor Eight?”
“It can’t.”
“Vanessa found a filing saying it does.”
“Then either she misunderstood what she found…”
“Or?”
Dad’s face tightened.
“Someone used the name of a dead trust.”
My skin prickled.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I turned back to the ledger.
Near the bottom of the page, my mother had drawn a small star beside the trust name.
I recognized that star.
She used to put it on notes inside my lunchbox.
Five points, with the bottom line extending slightly too far.
Beside it were four words.
For Claire.
Not Arthur.
I looked up.
Dad was staring at the same sentence.
“You’ve seen this before.”
“Yes.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You had twelve years.”
“I know.”
“Did you ever investigate?”
“I tried.”
“How?”
“I asked her attorney.
Her accountant.
Two people from the foundation.
Nobody knew.”
“And you just stopped?”
“No.”
May you like
His voice sharpened slightly.
“I spent three years trying to understand that sentence.”
