PART 4 — A Storage Key Neither of Them Wanted Me to Use
I did not answer Judith. Maya gave me the address over the phone while I wrote it on the back of the locksmith’s receipt. The facility was fifteen minutes from Dad’s house. Derek recognized it; I saw his eyes move to the paper. He suggested we all go together. Maya asked me to put the call on speaker.
“Clara and I will inventory Arthur’s unit first,” she said. “If there are documents concerning either of you, we’ll make copies available through counsel.” Judith frowned at the word counsel. Derek said lawyers would turn an ordinary family disagreement into a disaster. Maya asked whether he had retained one. He said he did not need one.
After we ended the call, Derek wanted to know whether I planned to sleep. I told him I would stay in the office until morning. He offered to come upstairs; I declined. Judith took her coat but waited near the door as though expecting him to follow. When he remained in the kitchen, she left alone.
I carried the safe upstairs with Derek’s help. It was too heavy for either of us to lift without talking through the turn on the staircase. We set it near my desk, where the drag marks from its removal crossed the wood floor. Derek looked at them and said he had planned to repair the damage tomorrow.
“You moved it while I was asleep,” I said. He leaned against the doorframe. “I knew you’d refuse to open it.” “I might have,” I said. “You could have asked.” He looked toward the safe and admitted he had assumed I would tell Maya, who would persuade me to wait.
He left me there. I locked the office door and spread Dad’s papers across the desk. The forged authorization used a copy of my signature from an insurance form I had signed the previous year. The uneven loop in the C was identical. Whoever prepared it had not watched me sign; they had copied a sample.
At five, I heard a car pull into the driveway. Through the office window, I saw Judith return. Derek met her at the side door. They spoke under the eave, where the rain hid their words. She held a flat cardboard folder against her coat. Before they came inside, I photographed them from the window.
Maya arrived just before eight. Derek was waiting in the kitchen with a pot of coffee and a promise that he wanted to cooperate. She accepted a cup, then asked him whether he had entered Dad’s information into the home equity form. He said he could not recall. Judith had been certain the form was only an inquiry.
Maya wrote down both answers. She also advised me to separate the company’s accounts from every device Derek could access. I called my office manager, Nina, and asked her to suspend an old shared tablet that still had our bookkeeping app installed. Nina said she would handle it before anyone arrived at the workshop.
At the storage facility, Maya showed the manager Dad’s authorization. Unit 214 occupied the ground floor. When I turned the brass key, its lock moved stiffly, then gave way. Inside were eight banker’s boxes, a folding chair, and the drafting table I had used as a teenager. Seeing that table in the dim unit hurt more than seeing his handwriting.
Dad had labeled the boxes by year. The newest sat nearest the door. Maya photographed the seals before we opened anything. I pulled out a folder containing printed emails between Dad and an investment broker. Dad had asked whether a company using Derek’s name had ever held an interest in Bell Weather Restoration. The broker had found none.
The next folder contained a copy of a deed for Dad’s house and a statement from his bank. Dad had made no withdrawals large enough to support Derek’s loans. He was checking what Derek had told him. On a yellow note, he wrote: Ask Clara about the van invoice. May show where they got the figure.
I knew the invoice. Two months earlier, Bell Weather had bought a used delivery van for thirty-six thousand dollars. Derek had stopped at my office that day and picked up an envelope for me. The invoice lay on the front desk. I could picture him waiting alone beside it while Nina brought me in from the warehouse.
Maya opened the final box. Inside were copies of text messages Dad had printed from his phone. Derek’s number appeared above requests for money that grew more urgent each week. At first he asked for a short loan. Then he offered Dad a percentage of a real estate deal. When Dad refused, Derek sent a photograph of the safe.
The photograph showed it in Dad’s back room. Beneath it Derek had written, You have enough to help your family. Dad replied, What I have is mine to decide about. Three days later, Judith texted Dad that Derek was under strain and that a father should think about what a refusal might cost his daughter.
I read that sentence twice. Judith’s message stopped short of an explicit threat, but she had put me at the center of the pressure. Dad answered that he would speak to me himself. I searched for a later exchange and found none. He had become too ill for long conversations soon afterward.
Maya was checking dates against her estate file when my phone buzzed. Nina had sent a photograph from the workshop. Derek’s old tablet had logged into our account at 5:14 that morning. Someone had tried to download a list of company assets. The security service blocked it because Nina had changed the password minutes earlier.
I showed Maya. She photographed my screen and asked Nina to preserve the access log. I thought of the flat folder Judith had carried into the house. Derek might have been trying to complete the transfer without my signature, or he might have wanted an accurate list to show his lenders. Either possibility changed what I needed to do next.
We took the newest boxes to Maya’s office, leaving the drafting table and older records sealed. On the drive, she told me Dad had approached her in the final weeks of his illness. He feared Derek would claim that I had authorized a guarantee. Maya had helped him preserve what he found, but Dad wanted me to see Derek’s choices for myself.
“I told him to speak with you plainly,” she said. “He thought you would feel forced to defend one of us before you had the papers.” I watched the morning traffic through the windshield. Dad had understood how often I smoothed over disagreements between him and Derek. He had given me records instead of demanding that I take his side.
At a red light, Derek called. I let it ring, then listened to the message. His voice was low and unsteady. “Mom says you’re at the unit. Please come home before Maya convinces you this is worse than it is. There are things about the debt I haven’t told you.” The light changed. I saved the message.
END PART 4
