Chapter 7: The Past
Evelyn spent the weekend in the quiet of her new Manhattan apartment going through the boxes Nathaniel Reeves had delivered from August Voss’s private archives.
There were letters from her mother refusing contact.
There were reports from private investigators August had hired to watch over Evelyn from a distance.
There were medical records from the years her mother had struggled alone.
And there was a single black notebook August had kept near the end.
In it, he had written about the day he learned his daughter had married a man who would later produce Grant Harper.
She chose poorly. I stayed away because she asked me to. Now her daughter is married to a man who treats her like a servant. I will not stay away from my granddaughter any longer.
Evelyn read the notebook until the words blurred.
She had grown up believing her grandfather was a myth, a name her mother refused to speak. She had built her life believing she had no powerful relatives, no safety net, no one who would catch her if she fell.
August had been watching the whole time.
He had seen Grant.
He had seen Margaret.
He had seen the way they diminished her.
And in the final months of his life, he had rewritten his will to give Evelyn the one thing they had always believed she could never have.
Power.
Evelyn closed the notebook and looked out at the city lights.
May you like
The past was not kind.
But it had left her the tools to make the future different.
