Chapter 10 - The Letter Robert Left
Nina arrived the following morning in a faded denim jacket, carrying a grocery-store envelope held shut with two rubber bands. She stopped at the nursery window before coming into my room.
"That's your little girl?" she asked, looking at the photograph on Daniel's phone.
"Yes," I said. "She's hanging on."
Nina nodded as if the baby had just given her permission to be brave.
"Your father set aside four hundred and eighty thousand dollars," she told Daniel. "Not for Ruth. Not for Victor. For scholarships and emergency grants to workers' families. The money was in a separate trust."
Daniel unfolded a bank statement. Withdrawals had started six months after Robert's death. First ten thousand, then thirty, then a hundred. Each was labeled orchard restructuring or adviser fees.
"Who got it?" I asked.
"A real-estate venture Victor controlled. Your mother approved every transfer. The venture failed. I asked for the books and got fired."
"Why didn't you go to the police?" Daniel asked, his voice rough.
"I reported what I had to the trust's attorney. Victor claimed the money was properly invested. The records vanished before we could prove otherwise. I should have pushed harder."
She placed a folded sheet of paper in Daniel's hands. Robert's handwriting was small and slightly crooked.
Daniel read out loud. "If I'm gone, tell the kids who work here that the orchard still believes in them. Don't let their futures become a line on somebody else's balance sheet."
He stopped, swallowed, and kept reading.
"Daniel, you don't owe anyone your silence just because they raised you. Love isn't a debt you pay by looking away."
I watched my husband bend over the letter. He cried without making a sound.
Then Nina slid one more document from the envelope. It showed the same real-estate company that had received the scholarship money.
May you like
Its owners were listed as Victor Hale and Ruth Mercer.
Under their names appeared a second secret: they had married in a courthouse eight months earlier.
