The Real Heiress Don't Need Your Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fifty Cents

At midnight Abby finds the family ledger off by fifty cents on every line, and Anson in the study with her, until her father walks in.

I did not sleep.

The room they gave me had a canopy bed, a rocking horse and a shelf of picture books with my name on the spines.

Abigail, in gold letters, twenty-five years of dust wiped off every one.

I took the check out of my pocket and laid it flat on the desk.

The one in front of the zeros really was a darker blue than the rest.

At midnight I gave up on the bed and went looking for numbers.

Accountants are not brave. We are curious, and it works out the same.

The house was silent. A lamp burned at the far end of the west hall.

The study door stood open a hand's width.

I pushed it with one finger.

Lawrence Whitcroft's desk was neat, almost bare, except for a stack of printed pages under a green glass weight.

WHITCROFT FAMILY FOUNDATION, QUARTERLY LEDGER, said the top sheet.

I should have turned around.

Instead I switched on the desk lamp and ran my finger down the right-hand column.

Grants paid. Grants received. Interest posted.

The first line ended in fifty cents.

So did the second.

So did the third, and the tenth, and the fortieth.

I flipped a page and checked again.

Every line in the ledger was off by exactly fifty cents.

My stomach went cold, and then, strangely, calm.

Three days ago I had spent a whole night hunting fifty cents in a stranger's books.

Here was fifty cents again, on four thousand lines, and nobody had deleted any of them.

Somebody was skimming a coin at a time, and nobody ever checks the coins.

I took out my phone and photographed every page.

The floor creaked behind me.

I spun around with the phone held up in front of me.

Anson Rotherham stood in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, a folder under his arm and a small brass key in his hand.

"Turn that off," he said quietly.

"What are you doing in my father's study?" I whispered.

"The same thing you are."

"I'm reading."

"I'm taking," he said, and tapped the folder. "Put the ledger back and go to bed."

"Whose files are those?"

"Mine."

"Then why do you need a key to my father's desk?"

He didn't answer.

I stepped closer and read the tab on the folder.

ROTHERHAM LOGISTICS, LOAN SCHEDULE, SIX YEARS.

"You told me your company was fine," I said.

"I told you nothing. You told me my company was dying, to forty people with phones."

His voice was low and hard.

"Your little speech cost me a credit line. Three banks called me before midnight."

I felt the heat go up my neck.

"You said you'd marry a stranger and not love her. What did you expect?"

"I expected you to take the check and get on the bus."

"Is that why you were so rude?" I asked. "You wanted me gone?"

For one second his face changed.

Then it went blank again. "I was rude because I am rude. Ask anyone."

A voice came from the hall.

"Is that my daughter's laugh I hear?"

Both of us froze.

Lawrence Whitcroft stepped into the doorway in a silk robe, hair mussed, smiling.

His gold pen was in the robe's breast pocket. Even at midnight he had it on him.

His eyes went to the desk, to the ledger and to the lamp I had turned on.

"Looking for something, my girl?" he said.

My mouth opened.

I could not think of a single reason a woman would be reading her father's foundation books at midnight.

"She's with me, sir," Anson said.

He stepped beside me and slid an arm around my waist.

I almost jumped out of my skin.

"She wanted to see where the Whitcrofts keep their history," he said. "I brought her down. I'm sorry. We lost track of time."

Lawrence's smile widened.

"Young love," he said. "At midnight. Well, I won't tell Beatrix."

He walked to the desk and squared the stack of pages with both hands.

He did not look at the first page, or the last.

He just touched them, gently, with the flat of his fingers.

"Go to bed, you two," he said. "Tomorrow we have the doctor, and a nice breakfast."

Anson steered me out into the hall.

His arm stayed around me until the study door was out of sight.

Then he let go and stepped away from me.

I looked at his hand where it hung at his side.

The palm was wet, and it was shaking.

Anson Rotherham was afraid.

It wasn't of me.

"You said the next thing they hand me will be a pen," I said.

"Not here."

"Then where?"

"Nowhere. Sign nothing, Abby."

He walked away down the dark hall before I could answer.

I stood alone in the corridor with four thousand lines of evidence on my phone.

Behind the study door, the desk lamp clicked off.

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