Willa sat with that for several miles. Then she asked how he had come to know her father. Reese told her about a ride fundraiser nearly eight years earlier, when a club member's bike broke down on a back road and Grant had answered his phone on a Sunday. He had come with tools, repaired the problem in the rain, and refused to charge because the riders were collecting money for a children's hospital. Later, when Reese insisted on paying for the parts, Grant took the money and donated it to the fundraiser. Reese had remembered him ever since.
"He was always doing that," Willa said. "Giving something away and then pretending it was no big deal."
"You do it too, you know."
She looked at him skeptically. "I just caught an invoice error."
"You found money that wasn't yours and made sure it went back to the right people. Most of the good things a person does can be explained that simply." Reese kept his eyes on the road. "Doesn't make them smaller."
Callum's office occupied the second floor of an old commercial building above a pharmacy. The receptionist greeted Willa by name but did not stare at her coat or the scar healing at the corner of her mouth. Callum met them in a conference room with a window overlooking the street and a table large enough for the documents to be spread without stacking one on top of another. He wore a plain gray suit and the expression of someone who preferred accurate answers to impressive ones.
He began by explaining his role. He would review the materials, determine whether there were grounds for a civil claim, and recommend what should be done to preserve evidence. He could not guarantee that the statutory declaration would be accepted for every purpose or that photographs of missing agreements would prove the transaction was fraudulent. The original signatories, the notary, the corporate records, and the financial arrangements would all matter. He made sure Willa understood the distinction before asking her a single question about Harlon Neil.
Willa liked him more for that. She had heard too many strangers assure her that everything would be all right when what they meant was that they wanted her to stop looking frightened. Callum asked questions that required careful answers, and if she did not know, he wrote down that she did not know. He asked her to distinguish what Grant had personally told her from what she had inferred and from what she had learned after he died. He did not punish her for the gaps.
They spent nearly three hours going through the chronology. Willa described the early partnership, the signing in the kitchen, the changed documents, and the weeks during which Grant grew worried but too weak to investigate. She showed Callum the USB drive's contents and explained which pages she had photographed herself and which files she had copied from office records she was authorized to use at the time. She pointed out the differences in the ownership percentages and the dates beside the amendment clauses. She showed him the email in which Harlon had asked Grant to approve a version that appeared to preserve Willa's position and the later filed copy that did not.