Chapter 2: The Empty Driveway
At six the next morning, I wheeled my suitcase down the front steps while the neighborhood was still blue with dawn. Michael stood inside the open doorway, one hand wrapped around his coffee mug, watching me like a husband seeing his wife off.
“Text me when you land,” he said.
“I will.”
His eyes flicked to the suitcase. I wondered whether he could see the missing folder in my mind, its empty place in the drawer. Then he leaned forward and kissed my cheek. I held still until he let go.
The car pulled away from the curb. I watched Michael shrink in the rear window, one hand raised in a casual wave. At the corner, I turned toward the airport, as expected.
I drove three blocks, pulled into the lot behind a closed pharmacy, and killed the engine. My hands were damp on the steering wheel. For a few seconds I could hear nothing but the ticking engine and my own quick breathing.
Jo’s car rolled in beside mine. She didn’t ask why I was crouched low in my seat. She just unlocked the passenger door.
“Bring what you have,” she said. “Leave the rest.”
I took my purse and the thin envelope of account statements I’d kept in my home office. My suitcase stayed in the trunk, packed for a flight I wasn’t taking.
Jo looked at it through the windshield. “He thinks you’re gone?”
“He watched me leave.”
“Good.” Her mouth tightened. “Let’s not waste the time he gave us.”
Jo had been my accountant for years, long enough to know which of my questions were really questions and which meant I was scared. She drove us to a breakfast place near her office, where the coffee was bitter and the booths were tucked far enough from the windows that no one could easily see in.
I spread the statements between us. My grandmother’s inheritance appeared there in quiet, orderly lines: balances, quarterly earnings, the occasional notice. Nothing in the pages explained why the folder had disappeared.
Jo read them carefully, turning each page with a fingertip. She didn’t soothe me or say there must be an innocent reason. That was one of the things I trusted about her.
“Did you make any changes to the account recently?” she asked.
“No.”
“Authorize anyone to check it?”
“No.”
Her gaze lifted. “Mara, if there’s a way into this account that you don’t recognize, we need to hear it from the custodian—not through a link, not through a number in an email. The number on your old statement.”
My phone vibrated against the table.
A security alert filled the screen. There had been an access attempt on my inheritance account from a device I didn’t recognize. I stared at the message until the letters blurred, then pushed the phone toward Jo.
She read it once, and all the color left her face.
“Call them,” she said.
My fingers fumbled the old statement open to the contact number. I dialed and gave the representative my name and the account information. The dining room seemed to draw away from me—the hiss of the grill, a spoon clinking against a mug, a child laughing at another table. I heard all of it, but none of it felt close.
Jo sat upright across from me, one palm flat on the statement as if she could keep the facts from sliding away.
The representative asked a few questions to verify my identity. Then she went quiet while she checked the account.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“I’m reviewing a request that was submitted for processing,” she said. “I need to confirm that you authorized it.”
“I didn’t submit anything.”
Jo’s eyes met mine. No panic now. Only the fierce concentration of someone who had just found the edge of a cliff.
May you like
The representative paused. I heard keys tapping in the background.
“There’s a document attached to the request,” she said. “It appears to carry your signature.”
