He handed me the letter through the narrow opening without trying to enter.
Before leaving, he said Marjorie wished to resolve the misunderstanding privately.
I told him a private resolution could not include surrendering someone else’s mail.
He did not answer.
After he left, I scanned the letter and forwarded it to my attorney, Priya, and Marcus.
My attorney, Gwen Carlisle, called me that afternoon.
She said the letter did not require an immediate response and advised me to continue avoiding public speculation.
She also warned that the dispute could become expensive if I tried to answer every provocation.
I admitted that I sometimes wanted to stand in Marjorie’s driveway and shout the names of everyone who had been hurt.
Gwen said the feeling was understandable but the action would accomplish little.
“The strongest thing you can do is keep the facts separate from your anger,” she told me.
I wrote that sentence on the same page as Miriam’s warning about documents.
The notebook was becoming a strange collection of advice from people who had learned patience in difficult ways.
That evening, I walked Sophie to her friend’s house and watched her disappear through the front door.
For once, I did not look toward Marjorie’s curtains.
I counted that as a small victory.
Chapter 26: The Accountant’s Daughter
Gerald Pritchard’s daughter, Laura, contacted Priya after learning about the old payment records.
She was a middle-school science teacher who had inherited her father’s desk and a collection of tax folders.
For years, she had believed Gerald left the emergency fund because of poor health.
Now she had found a sealed envelope in the back of a drawer.
It contained a resignation letter dated January 2006.
Gerald wrote that he could no longer approve reports without supporting invoices.
He asked the committee to commission an independent audit before any final distributions.
A second page documented his concern that correspondence from applicants had not been entered into the official log.
The letter bore his signature, but it did not appear in the surviving committee minutes.
Laura told investigators she had never seen it before.
She also brought a handwritten calendar showing meetings with Martin and Marjorie Kessler.
Those meetings took place before the cabinet disappeared.
Laura did not believe her father was entirely innocent.
She remembered him returning home angry and refusing to explain why he had missed another family dinner.
He sometimes dismissed her mother’s questions about the fund as meddling.
Laura was ashamed of how long she had accepted silence as proof that nothing serious had happened.
