Clark had been with Zane since the early years of the business.
The next morning, I took Mara to the office.
Mara saw my face change. “You know him.”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Very well.”
The next morning, I took Mara to the office.
Clark looked up when we walked in. He started with the same sympathetic expression everyone had been giving me since the funeral.
Then he saw Mara.
His face changed.
“My father wrote that you were handling my education account.”
I introduced her without easing him into it. “This is Zane’s daughter.”
Clark sat back in his chair. “Irene, maybe we should do this another time.”
“No. Now.”
Mara set the letter on his desk. “My father wrote that you were handling my education account.”
Clark barely glanced at it. “That account was closed years ago.”
“Closed how?” I asked.
“Zane understood why the money had to be used.”
“There were circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
He exhaled slowly, like we were the inconvenience. “Zane understood why the money had to be used.”
I stared at him.
Then I said, very quietly, “You just told us the account was closed. Now you’re saying Zane approved what happened to it.”
Clark’s jaw tightened.
Clark had just put himself against the letter.
Mara leaned forward. “Did he approve it or not?”
Clark looked at her, then at me. “The company was in trouble back then. We all made hard decisions.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “The letter is dated two months after my eighteenth birthday. He still believed the money was mine then.”
That stopped me.
She was right.
Clark had just put himself against the letter.
We spent an hour opening boxes until I found a file labeled with Mara’s name.
Zane never trusted digital records. He kept paper copies of everything important in a storage unit. Contracts. Tax files. Statements. He used to joke that computers lied more easily than cardboard boxes did.
I turned to Mara. “We’re going there.”
