I lifted the heavy lid, revealing neat rows of folders, bound ledgers, and old photographs of my mother.

I bypassed the personal letters and reached for the thick, black-bound ledgers from the late nineties.

These were her original accounts from the early days of the Vale House foundation.

I pulled the first ledger out and opened it on my lap, the pages yellowed at the edges but perfectly preserved.

My mother had a very specific way of keeping records.

She had been a mathematician before she married, and she distrusted the early accounting software of the era.

I began to flip through the pages of handwritten columns, looking for any mention of the offshore bank listed on Thomas’s photocopy.

My eyes scanned the neat, black ink.

Then, I saw it.

On a page dated October 14, 1998, there was an entry for a wire transfer of five hundred thousand dollars.

But next to the entry, my mother had written a small, faint sequence of letters and numbers in red ink: *H-7-B*.

I frowned, tracing the red ink with my index finger.

I turned the page.