“Your first business partner was named Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“And you never thought it was worth mentioning that our new neighbor had the same last name?”
“I wasn’t certain she was his daughter until today.”
I looked at him.
“You knew my first name.”
Richard grimaced.
“All right. I suspected.”
“How?”
“Your closing documents.”
I felt my expression harden.
He immediately lifted a hand.
“Nothing improper. The homeowners association sends ownership updates to the board. I saw your name.”
Of course.
Richard was president of the HOA.
I had forgotten.
“So you knew before I moved in.”
“I knew a Victoria Mercer had bought the house. I didn’t know for certain it was you.”
“Until today.”
“Yes.”
Ethan was still watching his father.
“What happened between you and her dad?”
Richard was quiet.
This time Ethan filled the silence.
“You always told me you built Caldwell Development by yourself.”
“I told you I built the company.”
“You said you started it in a borrowed office above a hardware store.”
“We did.”
“We?”
Richard looked tired.
“Daniel and I.”
A long moment passed.
Ethan’s face changed in a way I recognized.
It wasn’t anger exactly.
It was what happens when a piece of family history shifts under your feet.
“Why would you leave him out?”
Richard looked at me.
“Because I was ashamed of how it ended.”
The fundraiser continued around us.
Someone called Ethan’s name.
He ignored them.
I asked the question that suddenly mattered most.
“What did you do?”
Richard reached into the inside pocket of his blazer.
He removed a small brass key.
Old.
Scratched.
A paper tag hung from it.
My father’s handwriting was on the tag.
I knew it immediately.
VICTORIA.
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
Richard held the key in his palm.
“Your father gave this to me twenty-nine years ago.”
I stared at it.
“Why does it have my name on it?”
“He told me to keep it until you came looking for the truth.”
My throat tightened.
“I was six years old twenty-nine years ago.”
“I know.”
“What does it open?”
Richard looked toward my house across the end of the street.
Then he said something I never expected.
“Something Daniel hid before the first house on Larksburg Court was ever built.”
I didn’t take the key.
Not immediately.
Richard Caldwell stood beneath the fundraiser tent with his palm open, my father’s handwriting hanging from a piece of yellowed paper.
VICTORIA.
The sensible part of me wanted to say no.
My father had been gone seven years. Whatever disagreement he and Richard Caldwell had experienced belonged to another lifetime.
But grief has a strange relationship with curiosity.
You can spend years convincing yourself you have accepted every unanswered question.
Then someone places a key in front of you.
“What does it open?” Ethan asked.
Richard glanced at him.
“I think Victoria should decide whether she wants you here for this.”
Ethan looked at me.
That was probably the first time since I moved to Larksburg Court that he waited for my permission instead of assuming he belonged in the middle of something.
“You can stay,” I said.
Richard handed me the key.
It was surprisingly heavy.
“What does it open?”
“The old survey office.”
I frowned.
