Chapter 13: The Box Carol Taped Shut

Sheldon's POV

My partner's resignation was on my desk by seven the next morning.

It was one paragraph, and it was signed.

Under it sat my phone, which had forty-one missed calls and a video with two million views.

In the video I said "twenty-three dollars and fifty cents" to a room full of people.

I said it very clearly.

I had been proud of how clearly I said it.

I turned the phone face down.

My assistant knocked and put her head in. "Mr. Eccleston, the bank wants to know if the Fund's pledge is still standing."

"Leave me alone for an hour."

"Yes, sir."

She shut the door, and I sat there with my hands flat on the desk.

Annabel had said one sentence that I couldn't get out of my head.

It was Annabel's sentence: the apartment was paid in cash.

Brooke had told me the apartment was a rental the Fund leased for foster youth.

Dennis had told me the same, over whiskey, at the wedding.

I got up and opened the credenza behind my chair.

At the bottom was a banker's box with a strip of tape across the lid, and Carol's round handwriting on the tape.

It said: Don't read this, honey. It will only hurt.

Two years ago a forensic firm had spent three weeks on Annabel's email account.

They sent forty pages to the Hanleys' house, because I was on my honeymoon trip and Carol took the courier at the door.

She stapled one page of her own on top, a neat summary.

Emails sent from the account holder's device. Wire instructions in the account holder's voice. Nothing further needed.

I had read that page and I had believed it, because it came from Carol.

Carol had sat up with me the night I turned fifteen and nobody at the group home remembered.

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