"I won't."
"I know." She slid him a second envelope. "This one's the surveyor file, Pritchard. Read his license history first, then read the complaints filed against him." She held his eyes. "There are seven."
The fifth day, Kendrick walked the half-mile to where Marlene's old house used to stand. It was a construction site now: yellow tape, a backhoe, a sign that read Belmont Holdings, Future Site of the Magnolia Townhomes, Starting at $349,000.
Marlene was standing on the sidewalk across the street. She did this sometimes, she'd told him at dinner. She came and watched. She didn't know why.
Kendrick walked up beside her. They watched the backhoe push earth around for a long minute. The afternoon was hot. The sky was that particular flat white of a Carolina summer right before a thunderstorm.
Then Marlene said, "My mama planted that magnolia tree out front when I was six. I helped her dig the hole. I remember because I wore a yellow dress and I got mud all over it, and she didn't yell at me. She just laughed and said, 'That's a planting dress now, baby. That's what it is.'" She paused. "They cut it down on a Tuesday. I came by Wednesday to drop off the keys. Tree was already in the chipper." She turned to him. "Don't let them do this to your daddy, Kendrick."
He nodded. He wrote three words in the notebook: magnolia, six, Tuesday. He didn't know why he wrote those exact words; he just knew he didn't want to forget them.
Days six through nine were spent in the basement. Kendrick spread out every map on the floor, every survey. He bought transparent plastic sheets from the office supply store with money he'd been quietly saving from helping Burl at the garage—three weeks of saved-up dollars, $56 and change, all of it spent on plastic and pens.
He traced each survey by hand. He compared them to the originals. He worked through the night. He slept in two-hour shifts on the floor next to the maps. He ate sandwiches Bobby brought down at midnight between jobs. He drank coffee for the first time in his life and decided he didn't like it.
And he found something.
Every survey done by the same man, a guy named Howard Pritchard, had a starting point that was off. Not by much—a few feet—but always in the same direction, always in Belmont's favor.
The garage parcel: 16 feet east. Marlene's old land: 4 feet south. The Reed property: 11 feet east. A third Black family, the Hightower-Bells, who'd settled quietly two years ago: 8 feet east.
Same surveyor. Same trick. Same outcome.
Bobby came down to the basement around midnight on day eight. He looked at the floor covered in transparent sheets and red string and notebooks. He looked at his son—hair uncombed, shirt wrinkled, eyes bright with the particular alertness of someone who has been awake for a long time but isn't tired.
"Son, what does all this mean?"
Kendrick looked up. "Dad, it means it's not a survey. It's a recipe."
Bobby was quiet for a long time. He looked at his son the way you look at a stranger who happens to be wearing your child's face.
"You sure about this, Kendrick?"
"Yes, sir."
"You absolutely sure?"
Kendrick met his eyes. "Dad, they did it four times. They wrote it down. They filed it with the county. They thought nobody would ever check." A pause. "I checked."
Bobby nodded once, slowly. "Then I'll stand up there and say whatever you tell me to say."
He went back upstairs. Kendrick listened to his footsteps on the wooden stairs, the click of the door, the sound of his father pouring himself a glass of water in the sink. Then he turned back to the maps.
At 4:00 a.m. on day nine, Kendrick was alone with the envelope Renata had given him. The basement was completely silent; even the upstairs compressor was off. He'd already read pages one through eight of Judge Blackwood's financial filings three times. Standard stuff: stocks, bonds, a vacation house in Hilton Head, membership in two country clubs, nothing unusual.
Page nine: a single line near the bottom, almost as if it had been hidden there on purpose:
Belmont Holdings, investment interest, estimated value $217,000.
He read it again. Then he read it again.
His pulse started doing something strange—not fast, just loud. Judge Julia Blackwood, the woman assigned to every Belmont case in the county for the last four years, owned a quarter-million-dollar stake in the company that was suing his father. Every property Belmont took, she got richer. Every ruling in their favor, she got richer. It wasn't bias; it was profit. It was, in fact, exactly the thing the law said a judge could not do.
He sat very still. The basement was quiet except for the hum of the single bulb. Then he reached into the briefcase, pulled out a blank index card, took out his pen, and wrote one question on it—slowly, deliberately, the way you write something you are going to remember for the rest of your life. He underlined it twice.
He placed it in the inside pocket of the briefcase, the same pocket where his grandfather's note still rested. He turned out the light. He lay down on the basement floor and stared up at the ceiling in the dark. He didn't sleep, but for the first time in 10 days, he wasn't trying to.
The morning of the hearing was overcast. Bobby tied his tie three times before he got the knot right. It was his funeral tie, the one he'd worn to bury Marsha; he didn't own another. The fabric still smelled faintly of the cedar drawer he'd kept it in.