And now here was that name, that shut door, at the bottom of a legal summons, connected somehow to a trust fund and my mother’s estate and six months of quiet investigation into my life.

My mind spun trying to fit it together.

Why would the uncle we had cut off be spending money to find me now, years after my mother’s death.

What did he want.

Whether this binder in front of me was a gift or a threat, a rescue or an ambush, I genuinely could not tell, and I was still standing there trying to decide when my phone began to ring in my coat pocket, and I pulled it out, and the screen showed a number I did not recognize, with a Chicago area code.

Chapter 16 — The Chicago Number