Chapter 2 - THE MAN WEARING MY FATHER’S WATCH
At nine the next morning, Marianne did not begin by showing me the deed.
She showed me my signature.
Or at least something pretending to be my signature.
“That isn’t mine.”
“I know.”
The document lay beneath the glass top of her conference table.
Someone had attempted to use my house as collateral for a private loan worth nine hundred thousand dollars.
The application had been submitted thirty-six hours after my parents were killed.
My name appeared three times.
Every signature was forged.
I stared at them until the letters blurred.
“Celeste?”
“I don’t know.”
Marianne sat opposite me.
She was in her early sixties, with silver hair cut neatly at her jaw and the calm expression of someone who had spent most of her adult life watching families become ugly around money.
“But whoever submitted it knew the property belonged to you.”
That landed harder.
Celeste had spent years behaving as though the house belonged to my father.
Yesterday she had called herself “surviving family.”
But if she knew enough to forge my signature, then she had known the truth all along.
“Why didn’t the loan go through?”
“The lender verified the title.”
Marianne slid another page toward me.
“The property was transferred into your name when your grandfather died. Your father retained the right to live there and manage the property until you turned twenty-five, but he never owned it after that.”
“Celeste knew?”
“She should have.”
Marianne held my eyes.
“Your father told her.”
For several seconds I heard nothing except the air-conditioning.
The humiliation from the driveway changed shape inside me.
Celeste hadn’t made a mistake.
She hadn’t misunderstood an inheritance.
She had looked me in the face while throwing me off property she knew was mine.
“Why did Grandpa give me the house?”
Marianne gave a tired smile.
“He loved your father.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
She reached toward the brass key lying on the table.
“Your grandfather was not always diplomatic.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
“He didn’t trust Celeste?”
“He didn’t trust Grant.”
That surprised me.
Marianne stood.
“Come with me.”
Her office occupied the second floor of an old brick building that had once been a bank. She led me down a narrow hallway to an archive room containing rows of steel cabinets.
The brass key opened one of them.
Not a safe.
Not a box filled with cash.
A drawer.
Inside were three things.
A thick brown ledger.
A photograph.
And a sealed envelope with my father’s handwriting across the front.
FOR NORA, IF SHE EVER NEEDS MARIANNE.
My throat tightened.
“When did he leave this?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Three weeks before he was murdered.
I opened it carefully.
The note inside was short.
Nora,
If Marianne is giving you this, then something has gone wrong badly enough that I am not there to explain it myself.
First: the house is yours.
Second: do not let guilt make decisions for you.
Third: if anyone tells you I willingly gave away my watch, they are lying.
Dad.
I read the final sentence twice.
“My watch?”
Marianne glanced toward the photograph.
It had been taken at Thanksgiving six months earlier.
My father stood in the kitchen, carving a turkey badly while I laughed beside him.
His watch was visible beneath his cuff.
Stainless steel.
Black face.
Brown leather strap.
He had worn it almost every day since my grandfather gave it to him twenty years earlier.
Yesterday I had asked Celeste for that exact watch.
Everything in this house stays.
Especially anything valuable.
“Why would Dad write that?”
Marianne opened the brown ledger.
The first half contained property information.
The second half was stranger.
Dates.
Transfer amounts.
Company names.
One appeared repeatedly.
RED OAK DEVELOPMENT.
Beside the name my father had written one word.
GRANT.
My stomach tightened.
“How much?”
Marianne ran her finger down the figures.
“More than eight hundred thousand dollars.”
“Stolen?”
“I can’t prove that from this ledger.”
“But Dad thought so.”
“Yes.”
I looked again at the note.
“Then why mention the watch?”
Marianne leaned back.
“Maybe because he believed someone would take it.”
I suddenly remembered something.
Blake.
The phone.
The driveway.
He had filmed almost everything.
And the house had exterior security cameras.
My father had installed them after somebody broke into his car two years earlier.
I pulled out my phone.
“What?”
“I used to have access to the camera system.”
Celeste had changed the locks.
She had not changed the password.
The application opened.
Four cameras appeared.
Front porch.
Driveway.
Back patio.
Garage.
The recordings were still there.
My fingers shook as I selected yesterday afternoon.
There I was.
Kneeling in the rain.
My mother’s ashes darkening against the driveway.
I almost closed it.
Marianne touched my wrist.
“You don’t have to watch that.”
“Yes.”
I swallowed.
“I do.”
Blake stood under the porch holding his phone.
Celeste stood beside him.
Grant bent to grab my suitcase.
I slowed the recording.
Frame by frame.
He lifted the case.
Dropped it.
My clothes spilled out.
Grant bent again.
His sleeve slid backward.
Something silver flashed around his wrist.
I froze the video.
Zoomed in.
The image blurred slightly.
But not enough.
Black face.
Brown leather band.
A scratch across the lower-right edge of the metal casing.
I knew that scratch.
I had put it there when I was fourteen and knocked my father’s watch off the bathroom counter while stealing his shaving cream for a school prank.
Marianne stopped breathing for a second.
“That’s your father’s.”
“Yes.”
Grant had stood six feet away while I begged for my father’s watch.
Celeste had told me it stayed in the house.
And neither of them had mentioned that Grant was already wearing it.
I stared at the frozen image.
Then I remembered my father’s note.
If anyone tells you I willingly gave away my watch, they are lying.
I looked at Marianne.
“My father knew someone was going to take it.”
May you like
“No,” she said quietly.
“I think your father knew exactly who would.”
