“You’re the reason I bought the debt.”
The heater hummed.
My cut palm throbbed inside the gauze.
“Explain that.”
“Everett Sterling paid for my education,” Flynn said.
“Thirty-one years ago, he caught a warehouse kid reading freight manifests on breaks and decided that was worth a college tuition.
I owe your father the entire shape of my life.
Eight months ago, before he passed, he wrote me a letter.
Two sentences.
‘Keep an eye on the market around Sterling Global.
If my daughter ever stands in the road, stop the car.'”
I stared at him.
“He did not write that.”
Flynn reached into his coat and handed me an envelope, soft at the corners from being carried.
My father’s handwriting.
My father’s exact humor — even the little slash he put through his sevens, the one I put through mine because I learned my numbers at his elbow.
I read it four times and then I looked out the window and let the rain have my face for a while, and Flynn Harlan studied his phone and pretended not to notice, which was the second expensive courtesy.
For eight months I had believed my father left me nothing but eighteen percent and a cubicle.
He had left a sentinel on the road instead, and never told me, because telling me would have made me wait for rescue instead of building my own.
