PART 3: The moment we sat down, she said, “Did your mother tell you to bring that here?”
“She left me a note.” Carol stared at the tin. “Did she tell you what was inside?” “No.”
“Did she tell you why you needed to come here?”
I slid the three-page letter across the desk.
Carol read the first few lines.
Her expression changed.
She stopped at Wayne’s name.
Then she leaned back.
“Linda,” she said quietly, “how much do you know about your settlement?”
“Almost nothing.”
“Do you know the name of the attorney who represented you?”
“No.”
“Do you know which insurance company paid the settlement?”
“No.”
“Do you know how much the settlement was?”
I swallowed.
“Wayne told me it was around twenty thousand dollars.”
Carol looked at me for a long moment.
“Your mother wrote that?”
I shook my head.
“Wayne told me that when I was seventeen.”
Carol opened a folder that had been sitting on a shelf behind her desk.
She removed several photocopies.
“I was hoping,” she said, “that you would come here someday.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
“Because your mother came here twenty-two years ago.”
My heart began pounding.
“What did she do?”
Carol placed the first document in front of me.
It was a bank statement.
My name was printed near the top.
LINDA MARIE HARPER.
I stopped breathing.
The date was from thirty-eight years ago.
I looked at the account balance.
Then I looked again.
My hands went cold.
There were six figures.
Not twenty thousand.
Not thirty thousand.
Not even fifty thousand.
The settlement had been $186,400.00.
I whispered, “That can’t be right.”
Carol didn’t answer.
She placed another document beside it.
A cashier’s check.
Payable to an account held jointly by Wayne and my mother.
The amount was $162,000.
The date was three months after my accident.
I stared at it until the numbers blurred.
“Where did the rest go?”
Carol folded her hands.
“That is what your mother wanted you to find out.”
I looked toward the glass door.
Russell was sitting in the waiting area.
He was pretending to look at his phone.
But he was watching us.
I turned back to Carol.
“What happened to the money?”
Carol took a breath.
“I can’t tell you everything from memory. But your mother left instructions.”
She opened another folder.
Inside was a handwritten letter.
Mama’s handwriting.
The same careful letters I had seen on grocery lists, birthday cards, and notes taped to the refrigerator.
Carol read aloud.
“Linda,
If you’re reading this, then I’m gone, and I finally ran out of time to tell you the truth.
Please don’t trust Russell with this.
He knows more than he will admit.
Wayne took your settlement.
But he did not take all of it for himself.
He gave part of it to someone who promised to protect our family.
That person lied.”
Carol stopped.
I felt my stomach tighten.
“Who?”
She turned the page.
“The name is Daniel Mercer.”
I knew that name.
I just didn’t know why.
Daniel Mercer had been Wayne’s best friend.
He was the man who used to come to our house on Sunday afternoons carrying a bottle of whiskey and a cigar box.
He had died years ago.
I remembered him because when I was little, he always called me “Little Bird.”
I looked at Carol.
“Why would Wayne give him my money?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But your mother left records.”
She handed me another photocopy.
It was a deposit slip.
$75,000.
Then another.
$25,000.
Then $40,000.
Then smaller amounts.
All transferred into accounts connected to Daniel Mercer.
I stared at the dates.
They covered nearly eight years.
“What was he doing?”
Carol shook her head.
“Your mother never explained everything. But she made regular visits here. Sometimes she came alone. Sometimes she brought Wayne. Sometimes she brought Russell.”
I looked up sharply.
“Russell?”
“Yes.”
My brother was nineteen when I was seventeen.
He had been old enough to understand what was happening.
Maybe not everything.
