Three months passed before the first unexpected letter arrived.
By then, the foundation had a small office, a part-time administrator, and more paperwork than I had imagined possible. I had hired an attorney to separate the foundation's finances from my personal accounts, and for the first time in years, opening a bank statement did not make my stomach tighten.
Toby had settled into a routine again. School in the morning, homework at the kitchen table, soccer in the afternoon, and an argument every night about whether vegetables counted as dinner. Ordinary life had returned in small pieces.
Christopher visited twice a week.
Sometimes he stayed for dinner.
Sometimes he simply sat with Toby while I finished work.
Neither of us called it rebuilding a relationship. We did not need a name for it. We were learning one another slowly, without the urgency that had surrounded our first months together.
Then the letter arrived.
It came in a plain envelope addressed to me at the foundation office.
There was no return address.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
The handwriting was unfamiliar.
It said, “You found Wayne's records, but you did not find what he hid from Christopher.”
At the bottom was an address.
Nothing else.
I read it twice.
Then I called Christopher.
He arrived twenty minutes later.
When I showed him the note, he became very still.
“Do you recognize the handwriting?”
“No.”
He turned the paper over.
“Neither do I.”
“Could this be another attempt to frighten us?”
“It could.”
“But?”
He looked at the address.
“I know the building.”
It was an old apartment complex in central Phoenix.
Christopher had owned it decades earlier.
He had sold it after Wayne's death.
According to the note, someone had been living there recently.
We did not go alone.
Two investigators accompanied us.
The apartment was on the third floor.
The hallway smelled of dust and old carpet.
A woman answered the door.
She looked to be in her late sixties.
Her hair was completely white.
When she saw Christopher, she did not appear surprised.
“You took your time,” she said.
Christopher stared at her.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Evelyn Shaw.”
The name meant nothing to me.
She looked at me.
“You're Genevieve.”
I nodded.
“Come inside.”
The apartment contained almost no furniture.
A small table.
Two chairs.
Several cardboard boxes.
And an old wooden cabinet.
Evelyn closed the door behind us.
“I knew Wayne Montgomery,” she said.
Christopher's face hardened.
“How?”
“I worked for him.”
“When?”
“Before you met him.”
She opened one of the boxes.
Inside were folders.
Not copies.
Originals.
She had kept them for decades.
“I was his secretary,” she continued. “I handled correspondence, appointments, and certain private records.”
“Why contact me now?” I asked.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid of whom?”
She looked toward Christopher.
“Douglas Harrison.”
Christopher said nothing.
Evelyn explained that Douglas had discovered Wayne was keeping evidence against him.
Douglas threatened Evelyn.
He told her that if she spoke, she would lose everything.
She left the company.
But Wayne gave her something before she disappeared.
A packet of documents.
He told her to keep them safe.
“If I die,” Wayne had said, according to Evelyn, “wait until Genevieve is old enough to understand.”
I felt a chill.
“Why didn't you come forward when I turned thirty?”
Evelyn looked down.
“Because someone came to my apartment.”
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
My chest tightened.
“What did she say?”
“She told me Wayne had lied to everyone.”
Evelyn explained that Lorraine had convinced her Christopher was responsible for Wayne's disappearance and that revealing the documents would put Genevieve in danger.
“I believed her.”
“And now?”
“Now I know she lied.”
Evelyn handed me a folder.
Inside was a series of letters between Wayne and Christopher.
They had been friends.
Not merely business partners.
Friends.
The letters revealed that Christopher had been planning to expose Douglas.
Wayne had agreed to help.
Then came the final letter.
Christopher read it first.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He handed it to me.
Wayne had written that he had discovered someone inside Christopher's company was secretly transferring properties.
The person had access to records and was manipulating ownership documents.
The name was not written.
Instead, Wayne used the initials L.M.
Lorraine Miller.
My mother.
I sat down.
Christopher remained standing.
“How long did Wayne know?”
“Months,” Evelyn said.
“Why didn't he tell me?”
“He planned to.”
She pointed to another document.
“He scheduled a meeting.”
The appointment was dated three days before Wayne died.
The meeting was with me.
Except I had been an infant.
The date was wrong.
I looked closer.
It was not an appointment for me.
It was an appointment concerning my future.
Wayne intended to place certain assets under my control.
He wanted to protect them from everyone involved in the scheme.
Then Evelyn gave me the final document.
A handwritten list of names.
At the bottom was a sentence.
“Only one person knows where the final records are.”
I looked at Christopher.
“Who?”
Evelyn shook her head.
“Wayne never told me.”
“Then why give this to me?”
“Because the name is not written.”
She pointed to a series of numbers.
“Those numbers are a code.”
We spent the next several hours trying to interpret them.
They appeared to correspond to property addresses.
One number matched the warehouse.
Another matched the old apartment.
The third pointed toward a rural property outside Prescott.
Christopher recognized it.
“That land belonged to Wayne.”
“What happened to it?”
“Nothing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It was never developed.”
The property had been untouched for decades.
We drove there the following morning.
The land was surrounded by dry brush and scattered trees.
An old ranch house stood near the center.
Its windows were boarded.
The front door had collapsed.
Inside, dust covered everything.
We searched room by room.
Nothing.
Then Toby's soccer ball came back to my mind.
I had once watched him search under a bed for a ball and use a flashlight to look through the smallest spaces.
I crouched.
The floorboards near the fireplace looked newer than the others.
We lifted one.
Beneath it was a metal box.
Inside were tapes.
Dozens of them.
And a notebook.
Christopher opened the notebook.
The first page contained Wayne's handwriting.
“If you are reading this, the people I feared have probably already tried to control Genevieve's life.”
I looked at Christopher.
He kept reading.
The final line was worse.
“Do not trust the person who claims to have protected her.”
We both understood immediately.
Wayne had suspected Lorraine.
But there was another possibility.
Someone else had been protecting me.
Someone who had never revealed themselves.
We opened the first tape.
A man's voice filled the room.
Wayne.
Then another voice answered.
Douglas Harrison.
They were discussing Christopher.
Then Douglas said something that made me freeze.
“Christopher is not the real target.”
Wayne asked, “Then who is?”
Douglas replied.
“The daughter.”
The tape ended.
I looked at Christopher.
For the first time, neither of us spoke.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: Wayne’s Tapes Revealed That My Life Had Been Part of the Plan Long Before I Met Chad, but Someone Had Changed the Target
My Husband Celebrated My Conviction Until One Quiet Message Reached the Man I Had Been Forbidden to Call My Father
Part 9 of 24
