It Was Never a Gift

“I did,” Adele said.

“As the sole trustee of my grandmother’s trust, and the holder of the audit rights attached to it.

Four months ago.”

The color that had come back into Leopold’s face went out of it again.

Adele watched him do the arithmetic — four months, an outside firm, eighteen months of records, every transaction he had assumed was buried — and understood that her father had just realized the ground had been gone from under him for a third of a year while he stood on it congratulating himself.

Ingrid gripped the back of a chair.