Chapter 3: The Man Who Knew My Name
“What did Harold take?” I asked.
Samuel glanced at my husband and daughter.
“May I come inside?
Your family should hear this.”
My husband, Peter, moved the dinner plates aside while our daughter, Emily, carried the box to the table.
Samuel remained standing.
“Dad built a delivery company,” he said.
“It began with a borrowed bicycle and three grocery stores.”
“What does that have to do with Harold?”
“In 2002, Dad came to your old office looking for you.
Harold Mercer told him you had moved away.”
My fingers tightened around the brass key.
“I never left town.”
Samuel opened his briefcase and removed a copy of a typed letter.
“He offered you a founding share in his company.
He said the idea came from the woman who gave away her last ten dollars when she had nothing.”
Peter leaned forward.
“How valuable was that share?”
“Today?
A little over three million dollars.”
Emily covered her mouth.
I pushed the paper away.
“No.
Owen didn’t owe me that.”
“That isn’t what Harold thought.” Samuel placed a second page beside it.
“Someone signed your name and redirected every payment to a holding company.”
I stared at the signature.
It resembled mine from a distance, but the N curled the wrong way.
“That is not my signature.”
“We know.
The holding company belonged to Harold’s brother-in-law.”
Peter rose so quickly that his chair scraped the floor.
“He fired my wife while her son was sick, then stole from her?”
Samuel’s jaw tightened.
“We believe so, but belief isn’t enough.
The original records disappeared from Dad’s company archive.”
“Then how did Owen learn about it?”
“A former employee mailed him one surviving ledger page last month.”
Samuel slid a photocopy toward me.
Beside my name was Harold’s office number and a handwritten instruction: ALL CONTACT THROUGH H.M.
I picked up my phone.
“Nora,” Peter said, “what are you doing?”
“I’m calling Harold.”
Samuel caught my wrist gently.
“Not yet.
If he knows what we have, he may destroy whatever is left.”
“He took twenty-six years from us.”
“And tomorrow morning, we take the key to First County Bank.”
My phone rang before I could answer him.
The name on the screen made the room go still.
HAROLD MERCER.
I put the call on speaker.
“Nora,” Harold said warmly.
“It has been a very long time.”
“How did you get this number?”
“You contacted my office ten minutes ago.”
“I did no such thing.”
Samuel reached for his own phone and checked the screen.
His face changed.
“What is it?” Emily asked.
“My father’s company database was accessed the moment I arrived here.”
Harold gave a quiet laugh through the speaker.
“Tell Owen’s boy to stop digging,” he said.
“Some acts of kindness are better left unrewarded.”
“You opened my letters.”
“I protected you from a confused young man who had become obsessed with finding you.”
“You signed my name.”
His warmth vanished.
“Be careful what you accuse me of, Nora.”
“Meet me tomorrow.
Ten o’clock.
Your office.”
“You are in no position to make demands.”
“Then why did you call?”
Silence filled the kitchen.
Harold finally spoke.
“Because that key does not belong to you.”
The line went quiet.
May you like
Samuel looked at the brass key lying in my palm.
Then someone knocked three times on our back door.
