Chapter 2
My father, Daniel Mercer, had been dead for eleven years.
A boating accident in Puget Sound.
He had been an accountant, according to every story I had ever been told. Quiet. Careful. The sort of man who labeled boxes in the garage and kept receipts for appliances long after the warranties expired.
He had taught me to ride a bicycle.
He had made blueberry pancakes every Saturday.
He had never, in any version of my childhood, belonged in the same sentence as Noah Whitaker.
“I did,” Noah said.
“How?”
“He worked for my father.”
“No. He worked for Bellweather Maritime.”
Noah’s expression remained steady.
“My father owned forty-one percent of Bellweather Maritime through three holding companies.”
I stared at him.
“That isn’t true.”
“It is.”
“My father was an accountant.”
“He was much more than that.”
I felt suddenly cold.
“Was he involved with your family?”
“If you mean the stories people tell about my family, no.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to decide for yourself after you know what happened.”
“Then tell me.”
Noah leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees.
“Your father became chief financial controller for Bellweather when I was twenty-four. My father trusted very few people. Daniel was one of them.”
I tried to fit his words around the man in my memories.
My father wearing an apron with flour on his cheek.
My father repairing a kitchen drawer.
My father standing beneath the maple tree in our yard on my eighteenth birthday, telling me I should choose a life that felt like mine.
“He never mentioned you.”
“He had reasons.”
“What reasons?”
Noah hesitated.
I knew before he spoke that whatever came next would change something I could not put back.
“Because in the final two years of his life, he was helping me prove that money was being taken from Bellweather.”
I watched his face.
“By whom?”
“My father’s business partners. Several executives. People Daniel had trusted.”
“And you?”
“I was trying to stop it.”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
“So my father was secretly investigating organized crime with a Whitaker.”
“No.”
Noah’s voice remained calm.
“He was investigating accounting fraud. Ordinary greed can do enough damage without making it dramatic.”
That sentence unsettled me more than denial would have.
“What happened?”
“We found enough to force changes. Some people left the company. Some settlements were reached privately. Daniel insisted the legitimate businesses be separated from everything else associated with my family.”
“Everything else.”
“Yes.”
“You say that as though the rumors aren’t true.”
“I’m not asking you to believe rumors or denials tonight.”
It was an oddly precise answer.
“And my father?”
“He helped create a trust.”
My heart gave a strange, heavy beat.
“What trust?”
Noah looked at my phone.
“The trust Grant has spent the last three months trying to access.”
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
“Emma—”
“No. There is no trust.”
“There is.”
“My mother would know.”
“She does.”
I stared at him.
The room seemed to tilt even though I was lying still.
My mother.
My careful, endlessly practical mother who called every Sunday and reminded me to take vitamins and send thank-you cards.
“She knows?”
“Yes.”
I reached for my phone.
Noah rose.
“Maybe don’t call her at two-thirty in the morning.”
“You knew my father. My mother knew. My husband knows. Apparently everyone in Seattle understands my life except me.”
“That isn’t fair to you.”
“No, it isn’t.”
He accepted that without argument.
I called my mother.
She answered before the first ring finished.
“Emma?”
Her voice broke.
“Mom.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Grant called. He said you went to the hospital with someone and he couldn’t find you.”
“I’m at Harborview. The baby is okay.”
My mother exhaled shakily.
“Thank God.”
“Mom.”
“Yes?”
“Who is Noah Whitaker?”
Silence.
Not confusion.
Not surprise.
Silence.
My eyes closed.
“You know him.”
“Emma—”
“Did Dad work for his family?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
The word felt like a door opening onto a room that had always existed inside my own house.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because your father asked me not to.”
“He’s been dead eleven years.”
“I know.”
“So when were you planning to tell me?”
“When I thought telling you would protect something rather than burden you with it.”
“Protect what?”
My mother began crying quietly.
Not dramatically.
That made it worse.
“You,” she said.
I swallowed.
“From what?”
“From believing your father’s last years were only about danger and secrets. They weren’t. He loved his work. He believed he was fixing something. He believed he was building something for you.”
“The trust?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Noah.
He had turned away, giving me a privacy he could not truly provide.
“How much?”
My mother hesitated.
“Mom.”
“I don’t know the current value.”
“What was it worth?”
“When your father died, a little over four million dollars.”
I almost dropped the phone.
Four million.
Grant and I had argued over paint for the nursery because he said forty-eight dollars a gallon was irresponsible.
“Where is it?”
“It isn’t a bank account you can withdraw from. It holds shares.”
“In what?”
“Whitaker North Maritime.”
I looked at Noah again.
This time he met my eyes.
“How many?”
“Your father’s original interest was nine percent.”
The air left my lungs.
My mother rushed on.
“It was structured so you couldn’t transfer or pledge the shares until you were thirty-five unless the independent trustee approved it.”
I was thirty-four.
My birthday was five months away.
“And Grant knows.”
Another silence.
That answer hurt most.
“When did you tell him?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then how?”
“I don’t know.”
A memory rose.
Six months earlier.
Grant standing in my mother’s study after Sunday dinner.
He had said he was looking for a charger.
Another memory.
A lawyer’s envelope arriving at our apartment and Grant placing it beneath a stack of mail.
Another.
Grant asking casually whether Dad had ever left “old company stock” that might be worthless now.
I had laughed.
“I think he found Dad’s trust documents.”
My mother made a quiet sound.
“Emma, I’m so sorry.”
I pressed my fingers against my forehead.
“Why did Dad leave me shares in a Whitaker company?”
Noah answered before my mother could.
“Because they were his.”
May you like
I looked at him.
He came closer.
