“Beneficiary?”
He pointed to a line on the screen. There, next to the account holder’s name, was another name. Mine.
Emily Mercer. I sat back slowly. “My father thought it was worthless,” I said quietly.
Rhodes nodded. “That may have been intentional.”
The branch manager leaned forward. “Your grandfather came in here about six months ago.”
I blinked.
“He did?”
“Yes.”
She smiled softly. “He told us he expected someone might try to discourage you from looking at this.”
I remembered the moment at the wedding. My father laughing.
Dropping the passbook into ice like it was trash. Grandpa watching from the edge of the tent. “He knew,” I whispered.
Rhodes nodded. “Your grandfather said something very specific before he left.”
“What?”
He opened a small folder from the desk drawer. Inside was a handwritten note.
“He told us,” Rhodes said, “that if anyone ever treated that passbook like garbage… we should know the right person finally had it.”
My throat tightened. I looked down at the damp, worn little booklet that had sat in a champagne bucket the night before. Three-point-eight million dollars.
Hidden in something my father never even bothered to read. “Why didn’t Grandpa just tell me?” I asked. Rhodes smiled again.
“Because some people don’t value things they think were handed to them.”
He slid the passbook gently back toward me. “But people who search for the truth…”
He gestured toward the vault door down the hall. “…tend to take better care of it.”
And for the first time since my father laughed into that microphone…
I realized Grandpa hadn’t given me junk.
He had given me freedom.
