I kept reading.
I did not leave you this business because I wanted you to run it.
I did not leave it because Whitfield is your name.
It isn’t anymore, and that is all right.
I left it because when your father threw you out, he wanted you to believe he had taken your future with him.
I wanted you to know he never had that power.
My eyes blurred.
Then I reached the final paragraph.
And discovered Nana Ruth’s last secret.
Silas’s father had known.
Years earlier, when Nana first suspected money was disappearing, she needed someone outside the Whitfield family to quietly help verify whether several insured properties and claims were real.
She contacted someone she trusted.
A maintenance worker who also volunteered with the local fire department.
Patrick Callahan.
Silas’s father.
The man my father later called trash.
Patrick had helped Nana uncover the first false vendors Grant created as a teenager working summers at the agency.
Nana planned to confront Grant.
Then she became ill.
Before she could finish, Dad discovered Patrick had been looking through company records.
He assumed Patrick was trying to expose or blackmail the family.
That was the real reason Dad hated the Callahans.
