My father threw me out on my eighteenth birthday, stole the $3,000 I’d saved from working after school, and used it for my stepbrother. Nine days later, while I was digging through a restaurant dumpster for something to eat, a stranger in an expensive suit called my name and told me my supposedly dead grandfather had left me everything. But there was one condition nobody had warned me about.

Richard had arranged for my car to be towed to a repair shop, though I didn’t understand how he knew the details. I promised myself I would repay everything once I had a job and somewhere stable to live.

The road climbed through low hills covered in late-autumn trees. Their leaves had turned bronze and red, and the sky was the pale gray of early winter.

For the first hour, I listened to nothing but the tires against the pavement.

Then I stopped at a gas station and bought coffee, toast, and a notebook.

I wrote down every question I could think of.

Why did Mom leave home?

Why did Dad lie?

Why did Grandpa wait so long?

What was in the house?

And why had my father seemed so certain he had the right to decide whether I knew my own family?

Bellmere appeared just after noon.

It was a quiet town built around a square with a courthouse, a library, and a row of old brick shops. A clock tower stood at the center, its hands frozen at eleven minutes past four.