Chapter 8: The Trust

Mrs. Verran received us in a study lined with green leather books.

A fire burned in the grate.

She sat in a wing chair with a tartan blanket over her knees, and she looked a hundred years old.

"Sit," she said. "Both of you."

I sat on the sofa.

Rowan took the arm beside me, close enough that his knee touched mine.

"I knew your mother," said Mrs. Verran. "Margaret Hale."

"She was nineteen when she came to my husband's office in a borrowed coat."

"She told him she wanted to see the books."

"My mother?"

"Her father was Arthur Hale. My husband's partner. They built the first Verran hotel together, on a lot in Rogers Park that nobody else wanted."

She smiled at the fire.

"When Arthur died, he left Margaret his thirty percent of the company. Voting shares. She kept them in a trust."

My heart began to pound.

"A trust for what?"

"For you."

The room tilted.

"Margaret wrote it herself, three weeks before she died," Mrs. Verran said.

"I have the copy."

"The words are, to my daughter, on her marriage, or at twenty-six, whichever comes first."

"Until then, a trustee votes the shares."

"Who was the trustee?"

"Your father. And after he died, your stepmother."

The firelight jumped in the dark glass.

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