We drove down Market Street and pulled into the underground garage of the Hartwell Tower.

The elevator ride to the forty-second floor was silent.

When the doors opened, the receptionist stood up immediately.

She didn’t look at my dusty boots or my plain coat.

She looked at my eyes.

“They’re in the main boardroom, Ms. Hartwell,” she said.

It was the first time in five years anyone in this building had called me Ms. Hartwell.

I walked down the long corridor lined with oil paintings of my grandfathers.

The door to the boardroom was heavy oak.

I pushed it open.

My father, Theodore Hartwell, was sitting at the head of the long mahogany table.

He looked older than he had when I saw him at the hospital, his hair thinner, his shoulders slightly curved.

But his eyes were sharp.

Beside him sat three lawyers from the firm of Bennett & Cole.

They had thick blue folders laid out in front of them, arranged in neat rows.

“Evelyn,” my father said, standing up.

He didn’t hug me.

We were not a family that hugged in office buildings.