Chapter 4: Cooper River

The Gaillard bonded warehouse sits on the Cooper River behind a chain-link fence and a gatehouse with one man in it.

I drove down at nine on Monday morning with my own coffee and my father's gavel on the passenger seat.

I was not going to sit in the barn and wait for the bank to call.

The man in the gatehouse looked at my plate, picked up a phone, spoke briefly and lifted the arm.

The building was a long brick warehouse with three loading bays.

A freight lift rose at the north end on rails through the roof.

Men in canvas jackets stopped what they were doing when I got out of the truck.

Anson came down a steel staircase from an upper office in shirt sleeves with a folder in his hand.

"You're early," he said.

"The bank opens at nine," I said. "I didn't want to be in the room when it called."

"You wouldn't have been," he said. "I told you I'd handle it."

"You told me Monday was when you start."

"It is," he said.

He held the folder out.

I did not take it.

"Term two," I said. "Out loud."

"This is the paper on your father's note."

"That's what I thought."

I took the folder then and opened it on the hood of my truck, in front of a dozen men and a forklift.

The first page was the bank statement for Marchant and Daughter's loan, the one I had stared at every first of the month for fourteen months.

The second page was something I had never seen.

It was a restructuring agreement, dated eleven months ago.

It moved my monthly payment from a figure I had never been able to make to one I had somehow always managed.

The third page was a second restructuring, dated five months ago.

Both were countersigned at the bottom by a party called Cooper Marsh Holdings, LLC.

Under the name, in black ink, was a signature I did not know.

A. G. Marsh.

I turned the page toward him.

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