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.

Eleanor unlocked the door with a key she wore on a chain around her neck.

“Your grandfather stopped using this room after the business was sold,” she said. “But he came here whenever he needed to think.”

“Did he come here after learning about me?”

“Many times.”

I walked to the desk.

A leather folder lay in the center, sealed with a strip of blue tape. My name was written on it.

I peeled the tape away.

The first document was a photocopy of the trust agreement. The second was a bank statement from eighteen years earlier. The account had been opened in my name, with my grandfather listed as trustee and Richard Hartwell as co-trustee.

The initial deposit was exactly three thousand dollars.

A withdrawal appeared the following day.

The check number was visible in the copy.

Pay to the order of Thomas Brooks.

The signature beneath it looked like my father’s.