PART 2
“Jake,” I said, gripping the phone so tightly my fingers hurt, “what do you mean he left something besides the tools?”
There was a crackle on the line, then the sound of a door closing somewhere behind him.
“I found a key,” he whispered. “It was taped under the bottom drawer of Grandpa’s old workbench. There was an envelope with it. Your name was on the front.”
My heart stumbled.
“My name?”
“Yeah. Not Mom’s. Not Dad’s. Yours.”
Across the desk, Mr. Harlow watched me with the expression of someone who was carefully putting invisible pieces together.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“At Grandpa’s house. I came to grab a few things before Mom and Dad sent a cleanup crew tomorrow. Emily, they’re not cleaning it. They’re searching it.”
The attorney’s eyes sharpened.
“What kind of key?” I asked.
“A safe-deposit key, I think. There’s a bank name on it. And there’s something else.” Jake swallowed audibly. “A note. Grandpa wrote that if you ever came looking for the truth, I should give this to you before they got to it.”
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
Grandpa had always been quiet. Not weak, not passive, just quiet in a way that made people underestimate him. At family dinners, while my parents praised Madison’s piano awards and fashion campaigns and college acceptances, Grandpa would be the only one who noticed when I stopped trying to speak. He would slide the breadbasket toward me, wink once, and later ask about my drawings or my part-time job or the old truck I had learned to fix by myself.
“You’re stronger than they think,” he used to say.
I had always thought he meant my parents.
Now I wondered if he had meant everyone.
“I’m coming,” I told Jake.
Mr. Harlow stood before I could.
“No,” he said firmly. “Not alone.”
“I have to.”
“You have to be smart,” he corrected. “If your parents already know investigators are involved, and if they believe your grandfather left evidence behind, they may panic. Panicked people make careless choices, but they also make dangerous ones.”
“Dangerous?” I repeated.
He did not soften the word. “Financial crimes can ruin people. Reputations, businesses, marriages. If the documents I’ve seen are accurate, your parents may have been moving money through shell companies and using family assets as collateral. That means your grandfather may not have left you sentimental keepsakes. He may have left you proof.”
Jake’s voice came through again, smaller now.
“Emily? There’s a car outside.”
I froze.
“What car?”
“Black SUV. I don’t recognize it.”
Mr. Harlow grabbed his coat. “Tell him to leave now.”
“Jake, get out of the house,” I said.
“I can’t. They’ll see me.”
“Go out the back.”
“I’m in the shed.”
“Then stay there and don’t make a sound.”
The line went silent except for Jake’s breathing.
Then, faintly, I heard voices.
My mother’s voice was first, high and brittle.
“He couldn’t have known. He was old. He was confused.”
Then my father, colder than winter glass.
