Chapter 8: The Letter to Harrison
Eleanor opened the front door.
She looked at me the way people look at something they expected to be gone and aren't sure how to process.
Behind her, the house smelled like turkey and coffee and the particular silence of a Thanksgiving that had gone badly wrong.
"Your father is in the study," she said.
She didn't move to block me.
That was something.
I walked past her.
Harrison was behind his desk — an old partners desk that had been in the family since before I was born.
He had his reading glasses on and a legal pad in front of him.
When I came in, he set his pen down but didn't take the glasses off.
"Raymond's attorney called," he said.
"He said you're contesting the estate."
"Raymond's attorney is wrong," I said.
"I'm not contesting anything.
I'm protecting what Marcus legally designated.
There's a difference."
"You're keeping four million dollars from your family."
"I'm keeping four million dollars that Marcus earned, in the way Marcus directed, from people who put me in a garage this morning." I sat down across from him.
"I'm not here to argue about the money, Dad."
He looked at me over his glasses.
Something shifted in his face — not softness exactly, but attention.
I reached into my coat and placed Marcus's letter on the desk.
Harrison looked at it.
At the handwriting.
His name, in Marcus's hand, on the front of the envelope.
"He asked a man named Warren Gault to deliver this after the estate was confirmed," I said.
"Raymond is trying to file an injunction today to freeze the estate before that happens.
So I'm delivering it now."
Harrison didn't touch the envelope.
"What does it say?"
"I don't know.
Marcus sealed it.
It was addressed to you."
A long pause.
The house was very quiet.
"He was a good man," Harrison said finally.
It came out like something that had been sitting in his chest all morning waiting for a way out.
"He was the best man I've ever known," I said.
"And he thought enough of you to write you a letter before he went on the mission that k— that he didn't come back from."
Harrison picked up the envelope.
He turned it over once.
Set it back down.
"Eleanor told me what Victoria found," he said quietly.
"In Raymond's office."
I went still.
"When?"
"An hour ago.
Victoria called before she left for Vermont." He took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"The photograph.
What Raymond wrote on it."
"Do you know what it means?"
Harrison was quiet for a long time.
Long enough that Eleanor appeared in the doorway, and I understood that she had been listening from the hall.
"Raymond came to us two years ago," Harrison said.
"Before he and Victoria were serious.
He told us he was an investor.
That he had contacts in government contracting.
He asked if we knew anyone in Marcus's unit who might want to consult on the side." He stopped.
"I told him Marcus didn't do that kind of thing.
I thought that was the end of it."
The room was very still.
"Did Raymond ever ask about Marcus's work again?" I asked.
Harrison and Eleanor looked at each other.
"Once," Eleanor said from the doorway.
"About a year ago.
He asked if Marcus had ever mentioned a company called Veridian Group."
The name landed in my chest like a stone.
Veridian Group.
That was the name on the shell company records Warren had shown me.
That was the name Marcus had been investigating.
"What did you tell him?" I asked.
"Nothing," Harrison said.
"Marcus never discussed his work with us.
We had nothing to tell."
I stood up slowly.
"Open the letter, Dad," I said.
"Read it before you sign anything Raymond's attorney sends you.
And if Raymond calls before you've finished reading it — don't pick up."
I walked to the door.
"Nora." Harrison's voice stopped me.
My given name, not Colonel, not the name he'd used that morning when he told me to stop ruining Thanksgiving.
Just Nora.
"I'm sorry.
About the garage.
About this morning."
I stood in the doorway for a moment.
May you like
"Read the letter," I said.
"Then we'll talk."
