IF YOU NEVER TRY, YOU WILL NEVER SUCCEED.
It was a mantra Albert had lived by. When the firm was still young and on shaky ground, he’d stayed with it, working 14 hours a day until he’d built it into a thriving law firm. All those years he’d remained purposeful and dedicated, always moving forward, never losing sight of his goal. But it hadn’t been that way for her. She’d followed along in his wake, accepting that his goals were hers.
She thought back on her earlier conversation with Jeffrey.
“Lost track of your family?” he’d said, making it sound like such a thing were ludicrous. Perhaps it was.
That thought was like the dinging of an alarm clock in her head, and she asked herself the question she should have asked decades earlier. Why hadn’t she tried to find her sisters and brothers? Why hadn’t they tried to find her? Was it because of what happened in Barrettsville? She was only nine years old when they left there; too young to remember the details of what happened but old enough to remember how they’d been a family.
They’d struggled through the hard times and made do with next to nothing, but they’d always had each other. After Barrettsville, everything changed. Their mama had decided to split up the family.
Why? What secret had to be kept? For how long? Did anyone still remember? Did anyone care?
Albert’s Secret
ONCE THE GHOSTS OF THE past began to pick at Margaret, it left her feeling more guilty than ever. She could remember the sound of Nellie’s laugh, the warmth of Dewey’s hand in hers, the way Oliver had carried her on his shoulders.
Where were they now?
She could only hope they were better off than they’d been back in Coal Creek, West Virginia. With Mama and Louella dead and buried, there was no one to ask. No one to say that Dewey had become a doctor just as he’d hoped or that Nellie had married well, that Oliver had raised a fine family and John Paul was a successful businessman. On days when those questions haunted her, she wondered whether she had abandoned them or had they abandoned her.
The last time she’d seen Dewey was at the train station. She should have searched for him, written letters to the army, asked around. She could have done a lot of things, but the bottom line was she didn’t.
IF YOU NEVER TRY, YOU WILL NEVER SUCCEED.
With a heavy heart she placed the paperweight in the drawer and walked out, closing the door behind her.
A week passed before Margaret gathered enough courage to go through the remaining drawers of Albert’s desk. It was a painful process. Everything she touched was a bittersweet reminder of what they’d once had and what she’d lost. Were it not for her fear that everything could end up in the hands of the state, she might have left the office door closed forever and simply pretended he was off on a business trip.
There were times when she could do that: ignore reality and fool herself into believing that tomorrow or the next day Albert would be returning home. But those moments disappeared in a heartbeat. Then she’d remember he was gone and she had to decide how to handle the estate he’d spent a lifetime building. When that happened, a strange new heaviness took hold of her and there was nothing she could do but give way to the sorrow. She’d lower herself onto the sofa or a nearby chair and cry it out, asking the Almighty to help her sort through everything.
In the earlier search she’d found nothing of value and no papers with instructions on how to handle the estate, but the bottom drawer on the left-hand side of Albert’s desk was full of files. None carried the familiar McCutcheon & Schoenfeld label and none of them were green, a good sign. Taking her time, she went through the folders one by one but found nothing other than notes on old cases.
Near the back of the drawer, hidden behind a divider, Margaret found a thin folder with Bateman Investigative Services stamped on it. Inside were three sheets of paper, all of them invoices dating back to 1944. The year before they bought this house.
It was odd that Albert would have this type of invoice in with old files. He had dealt with private investigators from time to time, but it was always on behalf of a client. Those invoices were marked with the client name, case number, and specific details for the firm write-off.
Puzzling over why he would hire a company such as this, she studied the first bill. It was a standard invoice form with a few sparse details written in blue ink. It indicated 16 hours of investigative services totaling $440. Expenses came to $53.40 for a total of $493.40. The others were similar with only the number of hours and amounts changing. Not one of them gave a description of what was being investigated. That alone was odd…almost as if whatever Albert and the investigator were working on had to be kept secret.
The longer Margaret looked at those invoices, the more concerned she became. It had to be something significant for Albert to spend this kind of money. And the way he’d hidden the folder behind the divider also meant something. Was there a problem with the house? A fraudulent claim to the title? Albert’s daddy died in 1943; could the investigation have something to do with the old man’s partnership in the firm? It wasn’t like Albert to hold onto meaningless bits of paper. If he kept these invoices and hid them as he did, they had to be important. But why?
Lost in thought, she was startled when the telephone rang. Jeffrey gave her a hurried hello then got to what he’d called about.
“Have you given my proposal any thought?”
“What proposal?” she asked, still preoccupied with the mysterious invoices.
“Regarding your shares of the firm. I hope you’re not talking to anyone else. I’ve already offered you a buyout, and I’m willing to match any other price. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know,” Margaret said absently. “I just haven’t made any decisions yet. I’ll get back to you as soon as I do.”
She was about to hang up when the thought that Jeffrey might know something about the invoices crossed her mind.
“Wait a minute, as long as I have you on the line, can you tell me why Albert would have been working with a company called Bateman Investigative Services?”
“Was this recently?”
“No, back in forty-four.”
“The name doesn’t ring a bell. But I was fairly new with the firm back then. It’s possible he was working on something I wasn’t in on.”
“Would you have Eloise check his files? Maybe ask around the office to see if they’ve done work for anyone else at the firm?”
“Anything that far back would be housed in storage. Getting the files brought up would take a week, maybe longer. If you want to tell me what this is in reference to, I might be able to help. I could ask around, see if there’s something more recent.”
Margaret could have been mistaken, but she thought she’d detected a bit of reluctance in his voice. Perhaps he wasn’t the one to ask. This might be something she should look into herself.
“I doubt it’s worth the bother,” she said. “Just chalk it up to a wife’s curiosity.”
He laughed. “Well, if you want me to take a look…”
“No need,” she said, “but thanks for the offer.”
After she hung up, she sat there for several minutes studying the mysterious pieces of paper and wondering what secret Albert was keeping. Unable to come up with even the most remote possibility, she picked up the telephone and dialed the number at the top of the invoice. On the second ring, a recording clicked on saying the number had been disconnected.