Chapter 5: Marwick
Daniel was on the road by seven the next morning.
He had not called the number.
He had not slept.
He had sat at his kitchen table with the card in front of him until the sky outside went from black to grey to the pale, unconvincing blue of early November, and then he had gotten in his car and driven north.
Marwick was two hours from the city.
A small town that had once been prosperous and had settled, over decades, into a quiet kind of dignity.
Old houses with maintained gardens.
A main street that still had a hardware store and a bakery that opened at six.
Thomas Reed lived on Calloway Lane in a white clapboard house with green shutters and a birch tree in the front yard that had grown too large for the space but had clearly been there too long to remove.
Daniel sat in his car outside for a full minute.
Then he got out and knocked.
The man who opened the door was small and precise.
White hair, wire-rimmed glasses, a cardigan that had been ironed.
He looked at Daniel the way a man looks at something he has been expecting for a long time.
"You have your father's jaw," Thomas Reed said.
"But your eyes are different.
Come in."
The house smelled of coffee and old paper.
Bookshelves covered every wall of the front room.
A fire was going, low and steady.
Thomas gestured to a chair.
Daniel sat.
"You called me last night," Daniel said.
"I did."
"How did you get my number?"
"I've had your number for three years." Thomas settled into the chair across from him.
"I was waiting for the right moment."
"And humiliating my daughter at her birthday party was the right moment?"
Thomas's expression didn't change.
"That wasn't my doing.
That was Derek Marsh playing a hand he doesn't fully understand." He poured two cups of coffee from a pot on the side table and set one in front of Daniel.
"Derek has been working with a group of investors who want access to the Stallone land holdings.
The estate review in six weeks is not routine.
It is a structured attempt to reclassify the primary assets before Michael can be formally introduced as a claimant."
Daniel picked up the coffee.
"Tell me about Michael."
"Michael Stallone is sixty-four years old," Thomas said.
"He lives in Portland.
He was a high school history teacher for thirty-one years.
He retired two years ago.
He has a daughter named Ruth and a son named Patrick.
He has never married." Thomas paused.
"He also has no idea that his father was Edward Stallone, or that he has a half-brother sitting in my front room."
"How is that possible?
He's sixty-four."
"Because your grandfather arranged it.
Your father was nine years old when Michael was born.
The mother — a woman named Carol Vance — was paid to leave the state and never return.
She did.
She raised Michael alone and told him his father had d*ed before he was born." Thomas looked at Daniel steadily.
"She believed it herself, by the end.
People find ways to believe what they need to."
Daniel set down his cup.
"And the documents from 1987?"
"Your father updated his estate structure that year.
Michael would have been thirty-seven.
Old enough to contest.
Your father's new attorney — Hargrove — drafted an amendment that formally excluded any claimant not named in the original family registry.
It was legal.
Barely." Thomas folded his hands.
"I refused to sign as witness.
Your father fired me the same afternoon."
"Why are you telling me this now?"
Thomas was quiet for a moment.
The fire shifted.
"Because Derek Marsh sent someone to Portland last week," he said.
"To find Michael.
Not to tell him the truth.
To make sure he signs a document releasing any future claim before he ever knows he has one."
Daniel felt something cold move through him.
"They're going to trick him."
"They already have an appointment," Thomas said.
May you like
"Thursday.
Four days from now."
