Chapter 10: Max's Pages

My father-in-law's study was on the second floor of the brownstone, behind a door that had been locked for four years.

The brass key turned on the first try.

The room smelled of pipe tobacco and old paper.

There was a leather chair and a model of a cargo ship on the windowsill.

A safe was set into the wall behind a painting of the harbor.

Patricia stood in the doorway with her arms folded.

"I'm not coming in," she said. "I've seen it. I'll make coffee."

She went downstairs, and her heels were slow on the steps.

The safe was open already.

Inside was a gray folder with a red ribbon, and on top of it a sealed letter with my name on it.

It was in a man's careful handwriting.

Joanna, if you are reading this, my wife has finally kept her word to me.

I have not lived to see it, and I am sorry for that.

Read the deed first and the letter after.

I read the deed.

It was twenty-two pages of legal type.

I read it at the leather desk with a pencil, slowly.

On the ninth page I stopped.

The Reed Family Voting Trust holds fifty-one percent of the shares of Reed Freight Group.

It holds them for the benefit of the first grandchild of the founder.

The first grandchild was Maxwell Reed.

Landon had never been named once in it, not as a trustee, not as a guardian, not as a beneficiary.

The voting rights of the shares pass to the child's mother until he turns eighteen.

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