Chapter 9: The Man Named Garrett
I forwarded Garrett's message to David Reyes at seven in the morning.
He called me back within the hour.
"Don't respond," he said.
"Don't acknowledge it.
I want to know who this person is before you have any contact with him."
"Adam gave him my number."
"I know.
That's what concerns me." A pause.
"Has Adam tried to reach you this morning?"
"Not yet."
"He will.
The broker would have called him last night or first thing this morning about the frozen listing." Another pause.
"When he does call — and I mean the moment he calls — I want you to put it on speaker and record it.
Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"Don't engage.
Let him talk.
Ask simple questions if he stops.
Don't confirm or deny anything about what you know or who you've spoken to."
I wrote that down.
Adam called at nine seventeen.
I put the phone on speaker, set it on Carol's kitchen table, and pressed record.
"I need you to come home," he said.
His voice was controlled.
"We need to sit down and talk through this like adults."
"I'm listening," I said.
"Not on the phone.
In person."
"I'm not ready to do that yet."
A pause.
"The listing on the back parcel — there's been a misunderstanding with the broker.
I need access to some paperwork to sort it out.
Paperwork that might be in the house."
"What paperwork?"
"Documents from my father's files.
I need to get them before someone gets the wrong idea about what's happening."
My hand was flat on the table.
I kept my voice even.
"What's the wrong idea?"
"That I did something without authorization." A longer pause.
"I was trying to help my father.
He doesn't understand modern property transactions.
I was handling it on his behalf."
"Did he ask you to?"
Silence.
"Adam.
Did your father ask you to list the parcel?"
"We've discussed it.
He knows I manage things."
"That's not what I asked."
His voice shifted — the control slipping slightly at the edges.
"I need those documents.
If you have anything from the house, from my father's files, I need you to return them.
That's my family's property."
"I don't have anything from your father's files," I said.
Which was true.
Ruth had given me copies.
The originals were with David.
"Then who does?"
I said nothing.
"Is it my mother?" His voice had gone very quiet.
"Has she been talking to you?"
"I think you should call your father," I said.
The line went silent for four seconds.
"What did you do," he said.
Not a question.
A flat, cold statement.
"Call your father, Adam."
He hung up.
---
Harold called David Reyes directly that afternoon.
Adam had driven to the farm.
The conversation had lasted forty minutes and had not gone well.
David relayed it to me in bullet points: Adam had admitted to listing the parcel.
He claimed verbal authorization.
Harold denied it.
Adam said Harold's memory was failing.
Harold asked him to leave.
"He said his father's memory is failing?" Carol said when I told her.
"That's what he told him."
Carol set her mug down hard.
"His father kept a handwritten ledger for thirty years."
"I know."
David had advised Harold to have no further direct conversation with Adam about the finances.
An investigator had been formally engaged.
The account transfers were being reviewed by a forensic accountant.
And Garrett — David had found him.
His full name was Garrett Marsh.
He was a property developer based two states over.
The wire transfer memo, *property deposit*, matched a holding company registered to Garrett Marsh six months ago.
"He was the buyer," I said.
"He was the buyer," David confirmed.
"And based on the timeline, he and Adam have been in contact since before the listing was ever filed."
"Does Garrett know the listing was fraudulent?"
A pause.
"That," David said carefully, "is what the investigation will determine."
That evening, Diane called me.
She had been quiet since Sunday — since she had stood up at the reunion table and said *she's been at this farm before.*
"I want you to know something," she said.
"I've been watching Adam for longer than I told you in the yard.
I didn't say anything before because I wasn't sure.
And because—" She stopped.
"Because he's my nephew.
And I kept hoping I was wrong."
"You weren't wrong," I said.
"No." A long pause.
"I'm sorry it took me this long."
"You stood up," I said.
"In front of everyone.
That mattered."
She was quiet for a moment.
"How are you?
How is the baby?"
I looked across the room at my daughter, asleep in Carol's arms.
"She's all right," I said.
"We're all right."
After I hung up, Carol looked at me over the baby's head.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"David files tomorrow," I said.
"After that, it's out of our hands."
Carol nodded slowly.
"And Adam?"
I thought about his voice on the phone that morning.
The control slipping.
*What did you do.*
"He'll fight it," I said.
"He'll say his father authorized it.
He'll say his father's memory is failing.
He'll find a way to make it complicated."
"Can he?"
I looked at the folder on Carol's counter — Frank Osei's written findings, David's notes, the transfer records, the wire memo.
"No," I said.
"I don't think he can."
But I didn't sleep well that night.
May you like
And in the morning, before David filed, Adam did something none of us had expected.
He called Harold's doctor.
