Chapter 4: The Lawyer's Name
We went inside.
Not because anyone decided to.
Just because the shed had gotten too small for what was in it, and the kitchen was where our family had always handled things that were too heavy to carry standing up.
Mom put the kettle on.
She didn't ask if anyone wanted tea.
She just filled it and set it on the burner and stood with her back to us for a moment.
"Say it again," she said.
"Slowly."
Dan sat at the table.
"Robert told me he'd been putting money away for Kira since she was nine.
Said it went through a lawyer.
Said you'd have been contacted."
"I was never contacted."
"I know that now."
"Then either he was lying to you," Mom said, "or someone intercepted it."
She turned around.
Her face was steady but her hands weren't.
She pressed them flat on the counter.
"Did he give you the lawyer's name?"
"He did," Dan said.
"I wrote it down."
"You wrote it down and didn't tell me."
"I wrote it down because I didn't know what to do with it yet.
I thought—" He stopped.
"I thought if I told you, it would blow everything up before I understood what it actually was.
I didn't want to hand you a fire and say good luck."
Mom looked at him for a long time.
"Where is it?" she said.
"The name."
Dan got up.
He went to the small drawer beside the refrigerator, the one where we kept batteries and rubber bands and things that didn't belong anywhere else.
He pulled out a folded receipt.
On the back, in his handwriting, was a name and a phone number.
He set it on the table.
I leaned over and read it.
*Gareth Pullman.
Attorney at Law.*
"Do you know him?" I asked Mom.
"No."
"Should we call him?"
Mom picked up the receipt.
Looked at it.
Set it back down.
"Not yet," she said.
"First I want to know if Robert is telling the truth about the money.
Because if he is—" She stopped.
"If he is, where did it go?" I finished.
She nodded.
The kettle started to whistle.
Nobody moved to get it.
Dan said, "There's something else."
We both looked at him.
"When Robert called, he said the lawyer had stopped responding to him about six months before.
He'd sent letters.
No reply.
He said he assumed the money was reaching you and the lawyer had just moved on."
"But it wasn't reaching us," Mom said.
"No."
"So either the lawyer disappeared with it," I said, "or someone told the lawyer to stop."
The kettle screamed.
Mom walked over and took it off the burner.
The silence after was very loud.
"Robert's coming next month," I said.
"He wants to meet me."
"I know," Mom said.
"I think I need to see him."
She poured the water.
Didn't answer right away.
"I think so too," she said finally.
"But I want to find out what happened to that money before you sit across from him.
Because if he set it up and it vanished, that's one story.
And if he set it up and then quietly let it vanish—" She set the kettle down.
"That's a different story entirely."
Dan picked up the receipt with the lawyer's name.
"I'll make some calls Monday," he said.
"No," Mom said.
May you like
She took it from him gently.
"I will."
