Chapter 4 - What My Mother Left
I called Martha before I called Dominic.
“Did my mother have a trust?”
Silence.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
“Martha.”
“I don’t know what was in it,” she said. “But there was an attorney. Anne met with him when she got sick.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“I thought your father had.”
There was pain in her answer.
Real pain.
I closed my eyes.
“Do you remember his name?”
“Samuel Price. There might be something in your mother’s old writing desk.”
“That desk is at the house.”
“I know.”
“I’m not asking you to sneak around for me.”
“You don’t have to. Your father told me to put your remaining things out for collection.”
At noon, she met me beside the garage.
Three boxes.
A winter coat.
My high school yearbook.
Everything my father considered mine.
Martha hugged me so hard I almost cried.
“I should have said more,” she whispered.
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
In the bottom box, beneath a stack of birthday cards, I found a sealed envelope.
My name was written in my mother’s careful handwriting.
Inside were a business card, a copy of a letter, and one short note.
Claire—
When you’re old enough, ask questions even if the answers make people uncomfortable.
Love, Mom.
I sat in my car for a long time.
Then I called the number.
Samuel Price had retired.
His former partner, Mara Ellis, agreed to see me that afternoon.
I brought the envelope, the severance agreement, and the card Dominic had given me.
Mara read everything without speaking.
Finally, she removed her glasses.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“And you’ve never received an accounting?”
“Of what?”
Her expression changed.
She turned the letter toward me.
Your proposed trust will hold forty-nine percent of the voting shares in Whitmore Freight & Marine for Claire’s benefit.
The office seemed to fall away.
“Forty-nine?”
“This is correspondence, not proof of the final terms,” Mara said. “We need the executed documents and current records.”
“My father owns the company.”
“Your father may own fifty-one percent.”
I stared at my mother’s handwriting.
Fifteen years of being told I should be grateful for a desk.
And she might have left me nearly half the building around it.
Mara reached for her phone.
“We’re going to request the file.”
Before she dialed, mine lit up.
May you like
A message from my father.
Sign the severance today. Don’t make me explain what happened to the missing money.
