Chapter 4 - “What?”
“You remember my coffee?”
“You remember mine.”
“That is because I’m paid to.”
“So am I.”
“For what?”
His expression remained perfectly straight.
“Apparently everything.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
It was dangerous, discovering that Larkin could be funny.
Not dangerous in the way I had once feared.
Dangerous in a quieter way.
It made him human.
And human beings were harder to dismiss.
He sat across from me.
“Why did you really take the job?”
I looked down at the reports.
“I needed money.”
“That part I believe.”
I hesitated.
“My father mentioned the Steves name once when I was twelve.”
Larkin waited.
“I remembered it.
When the job appeared, I told myself the name didn't matter.”
“But?”
“Some part of me wanted to know what kind of people you were.”
“And?”
I looked at him.
“I haven't finished the audit.”
That almost-smile appeared.
“Fair.”
Then I noticed the key on the table.
I had brought it every day since the gala.
“Winter stays green,” I said.
“What?”
“The clue.”
Larkin picked up the key.
“Your father would know where winter stays green.”
“My father hated riddles.”
“My mother loved them.”
“That is not encouraging.”
He turned the brass key between his fingers.
Then stopped.
“What did your father do on Sundays?”
The question seemed random.
“Why?”
“Humor me.”
“When I was little?”
“Yes.”
“Parks.
Museums.
Botanical gardens.”
His eyes met mine.
Botanical gardens.
Winter stays green.
Thirty minutes later, Maeve confirmed it.
Eleanor had donated regularly to the New York Botanical Garden.
More specifically, she had sponsored the restoration of a small administrative archive connected to its conservatory.
The next morning, with permission from the garden’s administration and two attorneys documenting everything, we opened an old storage locker registered under a charitable records agreement Eleanor had established years earlier.
The brass key fit.
Inside were six archival boxes.
No treasure.
No secret fortune.
Paper.
Thousands of pages.
Accounting ledgers.
Board correspondence.
Draft legal documents.
And one blue folder marked:
EMPLOYEE TRUST — FINAL REVISION
We carried everything back to the conference room.
The outside attorney, Miriam Cho, reviewed the blue folder first.
Her expression gradually changed.
“What?”
Larkin asked.
She looked at Maeve.
“Were you aware Eleanor intended to restructure ownership of several Steves companies?”
Maeve shook her head.
Miriam turned another page.
“This draft creates an employee ownership trust.”
Thomas leaned forward.
“How much?”
“Initially fifteen percent.”
Larkin frowned.
“That never happened.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“The final filing appears incomplete.”
I noticed another document beneath it.
My father’s signature was at the bottom.
So was Eleanor’s.
The third signature line was empty.
Gerald Steves.
Thomas stared at it.
“My father never signed.”
Miriam continued reading.
Then she stopped again.
“There is an amendment.”
She handed it to Larkin.
I watched his face.
“What does it say?”
I asked.
He didn't answer immediately.
Instead he handed the page to me.
The document stated that if the restructuring was delayed, responsibility for preserving the plan would fall jointly to Eleanor Steves and the independent financial trustee she had selected.
Daniel Arthur Woods.
My father.
Below that was another paragraph.
In the event that both trustees died before implementation, the original documents were to be delivered to their designated successors.
Eleanor had named Larkin.
My father had named—
I stopped breathing.
“Me?”
Thomas leaned closer.
My full legal name was printed there.
Penelope Grace Woods.
I had been eleven years old when the document was drafted.
“This cannot still be valid.”
Miriam answered carefully.
“As an ownership transfer?
Probably not by itself.
As evidence of Eleanor’s intentions and a basis for reopening the trust structure?”
She paused.
“It could matter considerably.”
Larkin sat back.
For once, he had no immediate answer.
Neither did I.
I had entered the Steves building three years earlier believing I was a secretary trying to disappear.
My father, seventeen years earlier, had unknowingly left my name inside a plan meant to change the very company where I now worked.
May you like
And suddenly the question was no longer what had happened to him.
It was what he had expected me to do if I ever discovered the truth.
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