Chapter 1 - SEVEN DAYS
I had spent twenty-six years wondering whether my father understood how young I was when he walked away.
I got my answer beside his deathbed.
“Yes,” Thomas whispered. “I knew.”
I stared at him.
The old photograph lay on top of his blanket between us.
A little girl with tangled brown hair.
Yellow sneakers.
Two missing front teeth.
Me.
Six years old.
My father stood behind me in the picture with one hand on my shoulder.
It was taken eleven days before he left my mother and moved into another woman’s house.
I had carried that photograph in my purse for years.
Now I slammed it onto his blanket.
“You knew I was six.”
Thomas reached toward me.
I ripped my hand away.
“I knew.”
There was no excuse attached.
No misunderstanding.
No claim that my mother kept me from him.
He knew exactly how old I was.
And he left anyway.
I turned toward the bedroom door.
A woman stood in the hallway.
Caroline.
My half-sister.
Elegant black dress.
Perfect posture.
Cold expression.
I had met her for the first time twenty minutes earlier.
She looked at me as though I had arrived to steal furniture.
“Thomas needs rest,” she said.
Not Dad.
Thomas.
She had apparently been using his first name since adulthood, though she had grown up in his house, traveled with him, worked for his foundation, and received every version of the father I had been denied.
I ignored her.
Behind me, Thomas struggled.
“Susan.”
I stopped.
His breathing had become rough.
When I turned, he was dragging open the bedside drawer.
“What are you doing?”
His hand disappeared inside.
He pulled out two things.
An old brass key.
And a sealed cream envelope.
Caroline’s expression changed instantly.
“Dad.”
That word finally appeared.
Thomas held the envelope toward me.
I did not take it.
“What is that?”
Caroline rushed into the room.
“No.”
Thomas tried to pull it back.
Too weak.
Caroline reached.
I moved first.
My hand closed around the envelope and I pulled it against my chest.
The brass key fell from Thomas’s fingers.
It hit the hardwood.
Caroline dove for it.
So did I.
I reached it first.
She stood.
“Give me that.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“Apparently you do.”
Her eyes flashed.
Thomas was trying to speak.
Caroline stepped toward me.
“Give me the envelope.”
“No.”
She moved between me and the door.
I clutched both objects.
“Move.”
“You walk into this house after twenty-six years and think you can—”
She grabbed my wrist.
I jerked free.
“Do not touch me.”
Thomas struck his hand against the metal bedrail.
Once.
Hard enough to make us both turn.
His face had gone gray.
I rushed beside him.
“Dad—”
The word escaped before I could stop it.
His fingers closed around mine.
Then he pressed my hand around the brass key.
“Seven days.”
“What?”
“Wait seven days.”
His breathing caught.
“Then open it.”
“The envelope?”
He nodded.
Caroline moved again.
I pulled the key away.
Thomas looked directly at me.
For the first time since I entered the mansion, he seemed less like the wealthy stranger whose name appeared in business magazines and more like the man in my childhood photograph.
Old.
Scared.
Too late.
“Promise me.”
I looked at the envelope.
Then at Caroline.
Her face told me she knew exactly why he was afraid.
“Fine.”
I stepped away.
Caroline followed me into the hallway.
“You have no right to anything in that envelope.”
I turned.
“I haven’t even opened it.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Then why are you terrified?”
She said nothing.
I left the mansion with the key in one pocket and the sealed envelope in the other.
May you like
Thomas died forty-three hours later.
And for seven days, Caroline called me every morning asking for both.
