Not personally, but I had seen him before.
"Wait."
I picked up the photograph.
My hand began to tremble.
Marcus noticed immediately.
"Emily?"
"I've seen this man."
"Where?"
I searched my memory.
Not at the courthouse.
Not at the repair shop.
Not in any newspaper article I could remember.
Then it came back to me.
A Christmas dinner in Tucson.
I had been sixteen. Aunt Diane had invited several friends and acquaintances to her house. I remembered a crowded kitchen, a table covered with food, and a man arriving late in a gray suit.
He had an expensive watch with a black face and a silver crescent.
I had walked into the kitchen to get ice.
Diane and the man had stopped talking.
He had smiled at me and asked how school was going.
I had answered politely and forgotten him because adults had always brought other adults into my aunt's life.
But I remembered the watch.
The man in the photograph wore the same one.
"This man knew my aunt."
Marcus went still.
"How well?"
"I don't know."
I called Diane.
She did not answer.
I called again.
Voicemail.
At 10:14 p.m., she finally returned the call.
"Emily?"
Her voice sounded breathless.
"Do you know Nathan Whitmore?"
Silence.
It was the first answer I received.
"Aunt Diane?"
"Why are you asking?"
"Do you know him?"
"Emily, where are you?"
"How do you know him?"
Another pause.
Then she said quietly, "He handled some estate paperwork."
My skin went cold.
"Mine?"
"No."
"Whose?"
"Your mother's."
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
"My mother had no estate."
"That's what your father told you."
"What does that mean?"
Diane began crying.
I had heard my aunt cry only twice in my life: once at my mother's funeral and once when she drove me away from my father's house after he died.
"Diane."
"I need to see you."
"Tell me now."
"I can't do this over the phone."
"Then start."
She took a shaky breath.
"The shop was never what they wanted."
The room seemed to disappear around me.
"What?"
"Emily, please."
"What did they want?"
She was quiet for so long that I thought the call had dropped.
Then she said, "The land."
I looked at Patricia.
"What land?"
"The shop property."
"It's half an acre."
"No."
Diane's voice cracked.
"That's what Ethan let people believe."
I sat down slowly.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'll come to Phoenix tomorrow. I'll explain everything."
"You're going to tell me now."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because I have spent five years being afraid of what would happen if I told you the truth."
I closed my eyes.
"And I've spent five years trying to find it."
Diane began crying harder.
"I'm sorry."
I almost ended the call.
Instead, I said, "Tomorrow. Don't make me wait again."
She promised she would come.
Then the line went dead.
I remained seated, staring at the photograph of Nathan Whitmore.
For five years, I had believed that my father's business was the center of the fight.
Now I was beginning to suspect that the repair shop was merely the visible edge of something much larger.
Something my mother had discovered.
Something my father had tried to protect.
And something the people who had stolen my inheritance were desperate to keep hidden.
The next morning, Aunt Diane arrived at the Iron Horse Tavern carrying a suitcase and the expression of a woman who had spent five years expecting someone to knock on her door.
She stopped when she saw Marcus.
Her face drained of color.
"You," she whispered.
Marcus looked at her for a long moment.
"You should have come sooner."
Diane lifted her chin, though her hands were shaking.
"So should you."
I stood between them.
"What is happening?"
Neither answered immediately.
Diane placed her suitcase on the floor and removed a manila envelope.
Inside was an old property map, several legal documents, and a set of handwritten notes.
She spread them across the table.
"My sister owned sixty-two acres of land."
I stared at her.
Then I laughed.
It was not because anything was funny.
"My mother rented a two-bedroom house."
"She chose to."
"She worked part-time at a dental office."