The Name in the Ledger

Callum was waiting in the car with the engine running, still in his undershirt, tie looped loose around his neck. He took one look at her coming down the driveway and killed the radio.

"That bad?"

"He has a file," Imogen said, climbing in. "A folder with someone's name on it, dated the week Mom died. Someone he fired and never let come back."

She told him everything on the drive — the ring, the note, the second set of initials, her father's hands going still. Callum listened without interrupting, which was one of several thousand reasons she was marrying him in four hours.

"Kestrel," he said finally. "That's not a common name. Give me your phone."

It took him six minutes at a red light to find her — Odalys Kestrel, sixty-three, an address twenty minutes outside town, no social media, one old business listing for a home-cleaning service she'd apparently run for years after leaving the Faraday house.

"We don't have time," Imogen said, even as she was already typing the address into the map.

"We have four hours and a groom who isn't going anywhere," Callum said, and turned the car around before she'd finished arguing with herself.

The house, when they found it, was small and neat, hydrangeas along the front walk, a wreath still up from some holiday months past. Imogen sat in the car for a full minute just looking at it, rehearsing what she'd say to a stranger who might know nothing at all.

She never got the chance to knock.

The front door was already open, and a woman's voice came from somewhere inside — steady, unhurried, like she'd rehearsed this moment far longer than Imogen had.

"I wondered when you'd finally come, Imogen."