I stared down at the crisp blue paper in my hand.

“I won’t make another scene.

But I am going to read every page of his company records.”

Lynn leaned over and squeezed my knee, but I could not look at her face.

I sat on the carpet long after Lynn left, holding the fourteen-thousand-dollar cashier’s check while my tears stained the yellow legal pad.

I walked into the strip mall office next to the coin laundromat at twenty past nine on Tuesday morning.

Marcus Vance, a retired legal clerk who had spent thirty years organizing county probate records, sat behind two towering stacks of dusty manila folders.