Chapter 4 - MY DEAD FATHER’S ACCOUNT

There are moments when your mind refuses to accept the sentence it just heard.

My father had been dead for eight years.

I had watched his casket disappear into the ground.

I had signed paperwork.

Closed accounts.

Met attorneys.

Helped my mother sort through forty-two years of marriage.

Yet Anna was telling me she had found a current bank statement carrying his name.

“Where?”

“In the bottom drawer of his desk.”

“My mother locked that office.”

“I know.”

“How did you get in?”

“I didn’t.”

Anna explained that several weeks earlier she had heard my mother on the phone inside my father’s old study.

When Evelyn left, she forgot to lock it.

Anna went inside looking for an envelope my mother claimed she had misplaced.

Instead, she saw a bank statement sitting half beneath a stack of tax documents.

The account held almost four hundred thousand dollars.

I stared at her.

“That’s impossible.”

“That’s why I took a picture.”

She opened the hidden album on her phone.

There it was.

My father’s full name.

Daniel Carter.

My mother’s name beneath it.

Account balance: $387,441.09.

Statement date: May 31.

My skin prickled.

My father had owned a small construction company when I was growing up.

Not glamorous.

But successful.

After he died, the company was sold.

I was told his remaining business assets had been distributed according to his will.

My mother got the majority.

I received the house, a modest investment account, and several properties Dad had bought over the years.

I never questioned anything.

Why would I?

Evelyn was my mother.

The woman who taught me to drive.

Sat beside me in the emergency room when I broke my wrist at sixteen.

Stayed awake the night before my father’s funeral because I couldn’t sleep.

People like that weren’t supposed to secretly keep dead men financially alive.

“What did she say when she caught you?”

Anna looked down.

“She didn’t catch me that day.”

“Then how did she know?”

“I think she checked the security camera.”

Of course.

There was a camera facing the hallway outside the office.

My mother had insisted we install it after a package disappeared from the porch.

“She confronted me two days later,” Anna said.

“What happened?”

“She told me the account was none of my business.”

“And then?”

“She said if I told you, you’d think I was after your family’s money.”

I laughed without humor.

“That sounds like her.”

“She said she had documents that could make it look like I had stolen from you.”

I stopped smiling.

“What documents?”

“I don’t know.”

Anna’s eyes filled.

“She said she could destroy my marriage before I ever had the chance to explain.”

I looked toward the hospital door.

My mother’s cruelty suddenly had a financial shadow behind it.

The nurse checked Anna again.

Labor was progressing slowly.

We might have hours.

I called the detective who had taken the initial statement.

He told me not to confront my mother about financial records.

“Let us deal with the assault first,” he said. “If you believe there may be financial crimes, preserve everything you have.”

I emailed myself Anna’s photograph.

Then I sent it to a cloud account my mother didn’t know existed.

At nine that morning, my younger sister Rebecca called.

We had not spoken much during the last year.

My mother blamed Anna.

Of course she did.

“Nathan, what the hell happened?”

“Mom assaulted Anna.”

Silence.

Then,

“How bad?”

“Anna’s in labor.”

“Oh my God.”

“And Rebecca…”

I hesitated.

“What?”

“Did Dad have any bank accounts that stayed open after he died?”

A much longer silence.

“Why?”

“Answer me.”

“I don’t know.”

That was not the answer.

“Rebecca.”

She exhaled.

“There was something weird after the funeral.”

My heart started pounding.

“What?”

“Dad’s attorney called me.”

“What attorney?”

“Not Mr. Wallace. Someone else.”

“Who?”

“I don’t remember. It was years ago.”

“What did he want?”

“He asked if Mom had given us each a sealed envelope.”

I sat forward.

“What envelope?”

“I never got one.”

“Neither did I.”

Rebecca went quiet.

“He said Dad had left personal instructions.”

I looked at Anna.

“Did you tell Mom?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“That Dad’s attorney was confused.”

I closed my eyes.

Of course.

Rebecca suddenly whispered,

“Nathan, I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I found one of those envelopes.”

My heart stopped.

“When?”

“Last year.”

“Where?”

“In Mom’s storage unit.”

I stood.

“You found my father’s letter and never told me?”

“I was going to.”

“Rebecca!”

“She caught me.”

The anger disappeared.

“What did she do?”

Rebecca’s voice broke.

“She slapped me.”

I went silent.

My mother had never hit Rebecca.

Not when we were children.

Not once.

“What was in the letter?”

“I only read the first page.”

“What did it say?”

She hesitated.

“Dad said if we were reading it, then he was probably dead.”

“That’s obvious.”

“No.”

Rebecca sounded frightened now.

“He wrote something else.”

I gripped the phone.

“What?”

“He said, ‘If your mother tells you my business died with me, do not believe her.’”

I stared at the floor.

Rebecca continued.

“There was another sentence.”

I could hear her breathing.

“He said there was money she didn’t know he knew about.”

My father had known.

Whatever my mother was hiding had started before his death.

Then Rebecca said the sentence that changed the direction of everything.

“Nathan, Dad also wrote that if anything happened to him before he could fix it, we were supposed to contact a man named Samuel Price.”

“Who’s Samuel Price?”

“I don’t know.”

Anna reached for my hand.

Rebecca whispered,

“But I found him last night.”

My pulse jumped.

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“Where?”

“He’s alive.”