First Federal Bank kept the safe-deposit section below ground.
Mom signed in.
The clerk verified her identity.
Then we entered a private viewing room.
Mom placed the metal box on the table.
Her hands trembled slightly.
Not from confusion.
From fear.
“Mom?”
“There are things I didn’t tell you.”
“About Abigail?”
“About your father.”
I froze.
“My father?”
She inserted the key.
The lock clicked.
Inside were envelopes.
Bank statements.
Photographs.
A flash drive.
And one sealed legal document bearing my father’s name.
GEORGE HAYES.
I stared at it.
Dad had been dead eleven years.
“What does this have to do with Abigail?”
Mom opened the envelope.
Inside was a copy of an old fraud investigation.
My father’s company.
Missing funds.
Shell accounts.
One name appeared repeatedly beside his.
DAVID MERCER.
The name felt familiar.
Then I remembered.
David Mercer had supposedly died in a boating accident six years earlier.
