He Called My Inheritance a Forgery in Front of Three Hundred Guests, Then Took Every Blow Meant for Me novel · Chapter 9 of 40

Chapter 9: The Library

Kendrick took the phone back and looked at the photo again.

"Or whoever he sent it to," he said.

"You think the banker was under the oak?"

"I think he's sixty years old and goes to bed at nine," Kendrick said. "Somebody gave it to him."

"Who?"

He didn't answer that either.

"Wear the uniform tomorrow," he said. "And don't say anything unless they ask you a question."

"Why the uniform?"

"Because you're staff," he said. "And staff can't be thrown out for being in the study. Daughters can."

I didn't understand that until the next morning.

The library is on the ground floor of the main house, across the hall from the room where my parents got married.

Floor-to-ceiling books.

A long walnut table.

My father's portrait over the fireplace, painted the year I was born.

There was a dog at his feet that died before I was old enough to remember it.

There were five chairs at the table.

Kendrick at the head.

Rosemary on his left, in a camel cardigan and pearls.

The banker on his right, with rimless glasses and a grey moustache.

His fountain pen was lined up exactly with the edge of his legal pad.

Two others I knew only by face: a man who owned car dealerships, a woman who'd been my father's accountant.

I stood at the foot of the table in my black uniform and my nineteen-dollar shoes.

Nobody offered me a chair.

The banker didn't waste time.

He slid a printout down the table.

The photo.

Blown up to eight by ten, so you could see the bookcase and my face and Kendrick's arm.

"At one forty-one on Tuesday morning," the banker said, "Miss Bradbury was in the CEO's private office, after hours, without authorization. Going through confidential files."

He tapped his pen on the photo.

"Six days after making a public scene about the will, in which she called our CEO a forger in front of the press."

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