The Missing Heir novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: June 3

I found him in the chapel with the lights off and the folded paper in my fist.

He sat on the piano bench with his back to the keys and his cast across his knee.

He had taken off the borrowed jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

He looked at the paper in my hand and knew what it was before I held it out.

"Dalton gave you that," he said.

"In the corridor."

"Read it."

I unfolded it all the way and gave it to him.

He held it to the little window light from the stained-glass boat.

His face did not move for a long time.

"This is my name," he said.

"It's not my hand."

"Niles."

"Look at the J.

I loop it at the top, since I was nine.

This one is closed.

Somebody practiced it."

"What's the date?"

I had read it three times in the stairwell, and I wanted to hear him say it.

He turned the page toward me with his thumb under the date line.

June 3.

"The week after we buried my father," he said.

"I was at my mother's house, eating toast, because she would not be left alone.

I had no vote on that board.

The will didn't pass to me until August first, and the lawyers made me sign for it with a witness."

"You told me about August first," I said.

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