I did not know I had pressed my last ten dollars into the hand of a man who would spend the rest of his life trying to find me again.
Chapter 3: The Man Under the Awning
The lawyer’s name was Mr. Avery, and he had, he said, been looking for me for the better part of three years on Samuel’s behalf, and then a few months more on behalf of Samuel’s estate.
Because Samuel had passed away that spring.
“Let me tell you who my client was,” Mr. Avery said gently, “because I think you only ever knew the thirty seconds of him.”
Here is who Samuel was.
In 1998, Samuel was fifty-one years old, and six months earlier he had lost his wife and his only daughter in a car accident on an icy road outside Spokane.
He had been a successful man before that — a builder, a company, a good life.
