Chapter 17: The Letter

A folded sheet of lined paper had come out of the envelope with the key.

It was written in blue ink, in the same upright hand as the tag.

Emerson came out of the bedroom in the swim shirt, saw my face and stopped.

"What is it?"

"Your grandmother."

She took the page from my fingers and read it standing up.

Then she read it again aloud, because I asked her to.

"Mr. Rowe," it said.

"If you are holding this, the newspapers have finally printed your face, and I was right about the shoes."

"In the spring of 2021 I put a small sum into a fund whose owner no one had ever seen."

"It was one percent of what I had, which is not nothing at my age."

"I have been a patient client of Halden Row ever since."

"The letters signed Mr. S read like a man reciting. The footnotes read like a bookkeeper's son."

"In August my son brought Mr. S to my bed, and I knew two things."

"The man was hollow, and the footnotes were not his."

"I did not arrange my granddaughter's marriage. I am old, not clever."

"But when she brought a man in out of the cold, I looked at his shoes."

"The enclosed key opens what I could not say with my son in the room."

"Take her with you. She will want to read it herself."

"She is stubborn, and she will want you to be too."

Emerson lowered the page.

Her eyes were wet, and she was furious about it.

"She was your investor," she said.

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