“Ask your father what happened to the money.”
The words blurred beneath the dashboard light.
Mr. Greer did not ask me to explain. He waited until I folded the envelope closed, then eased the truck back onto the road.
For several blocks, neither of us spoke.
The town passed outside in familiar fragments: the pharmacy with the flickering green sign, the diner where my high-school friends had celebrated graduation, the courthouse clock glowing above the darkened square. Everything looked unchanged.
I was the thing that had changed.
“What money?” Mr. Greer asked eventually.
I kept my eyes on the envelope.
“The inheritance my grandmother left me.”
He glanced at me. “Your mother told people it was used for your education.”
“She told me it would be.”
“And your father?”
“He said the business needed it temporarily.”
“Did you ever get it back?”
“No.”
Mr. Greer’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“That message wasn’t written by me,” I said. “I’ve never seen this envelope before.”
“Could someone have opened it before it reached your parents?”
“It was addressed to them. The message is on the back flap.”
He nodded slowly.
“Do you know the handwriting?”
I studied the blue ink again.
“No.”
But that was not entirely true.
The shape of the letters felt familiar. The narrow loops. The way the writer crossed the t in “father” with a short, deliberate stroke.
I had seen it somewhere.
Not recently.
Not clearly.
“Your grandmother kept records,” Mr. Greer said. “She was that sort of person.”
“She kept everything. Receipts, appointment cards, birthday invitations. She had a filing cabinet in the hallway.”
“Then perhaps there’s more than a letter.”
I thought of the house I had left behind, the empty spaces on the walls, my mother’s locked expression when I mentioned the inheritance.
“Maybe.”
Mr. Greer turned onto a quieter street and stopped outside a small white house with blue shutters.
“This is my place,” he said. “My wife passed three years ago, but I still keep the guest room made up. You can stay there tonight.”
I looked toward the dark windows.
