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.

At the bottom of the last page, beneath my grandfather’s signature, was a handwritten note.

The money was withdrawn the day after the deposit.

Authorized by Thomas Brooks.

And beneath that, in Richard’s handwriting:

Nathaniel, there is one more record. Your father signed for it.

I read the handwritten sentence until the words lost their meaning.

Your father signed for it.

“What record?” I asked.

Eleanor stood just inside the cider room, one hand resting against the doorframe. She had followed me without making a sound.

Richard’s note was still folded in my fingers.

She looked at it, then at me. “Your grandfather kept copies of everything important.”

“Where?”

“Usually in the study.”

“Usually?”

“There was one place he trusted more than the rest.”

I waited.

“The old office above the packing shed.”

I looked through the window toward the orchard. Beyond the rows of bare trees stood a long, low building with a rusted metal roof. A narrow staircase climbed along one side.