Then she noticed one more thing.
At the bottom of the page, almost hidden beneath Eleanor’s notation, was a date.
The day after the document had been transferred to Northbridge.
And beside it, another handwritten sentence:
Claire knows him. She just doesn’t know what he did for us.
Ruby looked up at her mother.
“Mom?”
Claire stared at the words.
“I don’t know any C.B.”
But the uncertainty in her voice said something else.
Somewhere in the past was a person Claire had forgotten.
Someone Eleanor had trusted.
Someone who might still know why a building meant for twenty-four working families had ended up in somebody else’s hands.
And for the first time, Nathaniel Graves was no longer looking at Ruby’s eviction notice.
He was looking at Claire.
“Think,” he said gently. “Who was C.B.?”
Claire lowered herself into Eleanor’s old chair.
