Chapter 7 - Nora's Box
Nora Hales lived forty minutes outside Atlanta in a brick ranch house with cameras over every door.
She opened only after Maya showed identification through the glass.
"No phones on the table," Nora said.
We complied.
She led us to a back room and pulled a metal cash box from a cabinet.
"Martin died in a single-car crash," she said. "Police called it an accident. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. I stopped guessing years ago."
She unlocked the box.
Inside were notebooks, copied invoices, and one envelope marked THOMAS.
My father's handwriting was on the back.
I touched it but didn't open it yet.
"Daniel came here?"
"Two weeks after your father died."
"What did he want?"
"He said Thomas had stolen company documents."
"Did you give him anything?"
Nora laughed once. "No. He was polite at first. Then he told me widows make bad witnesses because grief affects memory."
Evelyn flinched.
Harold's language.
I opened my father's envelope.
Inside was a copy of a complaint he had prepared for federal investigators but apparently never filed.
At the bottom, he had written:
IF I DON'T SEND THIS, IT'S BECAUSE CLAIRE ASKED ME TO LET IT GO.
My stomach turned.
I remembered the argument.
I had been twenty-five and frightened by how obsessed Dad had become with his missing retirement money.
"Please stop," I had told him. "You're making yourself sick."
He had stopped talking to me about it after that.
Nora touched my arm.
"He didn't blame you."
"What else did Martin leave?"
She handed Maya a ledger.
Most entries were initials.
H.C.
V.S.
M.H.
D.C.
Daniel Carter.
Next to D.C. were payments from the last three years.
Not eight years ago.
Recent.
Intentional.
Maya turned the final page.
A note had been added in a different ink:
May you like
BENNETT GIRL NOW INSIDE. POSTNUP REQUIRED BEFORE ACCESS EXPANDS.
The date was six weeks before Daniel proposed to me.
