Chapter 4 - Grandma’s Last Secret
Grandma’s attorney, Nathan Brooks, met me at his office overlooking the Willamette River.
When I told him the lockbox was gone, he closed his eyes.
“She warned me Richard might try something,” he said.
“You knew what was inside?”
“Some of it.”
He opened a safe behind a framed photograph and removed a sealed envelope.
Grandma had addressed it to me.
Claire,
If you are reading this, your father has probably called me confused, bitter, or manipulated. I am none of those things.
The properties are yours because you are the only person in this family who never treated me like an account balance.
The blue box contains proof of what Richard and Miles did. Do not confront them alone.
My hands trembled.
“What did they do?”
Nathan opened a folder.
For four years, Dad had managed Grandma’s finances through a power of attorney. During that time, more than $380,000 disappeared into accounts connected to Miles’s failing landscaping company.
Grandma discovered the transfers six months before her death.
“She revoked Richard’s authority,” Nathan explained. “Then she planned to report the theft.”
“But she died before she could.”
Nathan nodded grimly.
“There was also a camera in her basement hallway. Evelyn installed it after she began noticing files missing from her desk.”
“The flash drive.”
“She told me she copied the footage.”
My mouth went dry.
“Did she say what was on it?”
“No. Only that if anything happened to her, you would know where to look.”
I pictured Grandma at her kitchen table during our last Sunday together. She had seemed frightened but determined.
Dad arrived unexpectedly that afternoon.
They argued behind a closed door.
The following morning, Mom called to say Grandma had fallen.
I had accepted the story because accidents happened.
Because believing anything else would mean looking directly at the people who raised me.
Nathan placed another document in front of me.
It was a request Grandma had drafted for a financial restraining order against Dad and Miles.
At the bottom, she had written a note.
Richard is desperate. Janice will protect him. Claire must not be left alone with this.
My mother had not copied my key because she feared I would lock myself out.
May you like
She had copied it because Grandma knew something they believed could destroy them.
And now the only copy of that evidence appeared to be gone.
