“You could just walk away,” Harry said, like he’d read her thoughts.

Harry was weird like that sometimes, like he was the sorta-kinda brother she’d never had. Maybe when you didn’t have a family, you created one.

“But then there’s all that money,” Harry said, voicing the other nasty thought Jodi had been trying to ignore.

Trust fund, Mr. Owens had said.

Jodi might not know legal stuff, but she knew that trust fund meant money. Her father had set up a trust fund to keep himself frozen for as long as it took. That must mean a lot of money.

“I don’t think I could walk away from all that money if it was me,” Harry said.

Harry didn’t walk away from much, actually, but Jodi loved him anyway.

“It might not be anything,” Jodi said. “The company is going bankrupt. That means they’re not making any money. Maybe he didn’t leave enough.”

Harry ate another bite of pizza. “Only one way to find out,” he said around a mouthful of sausage.

Jodi put her piece of pizza back down in the box. “I’m not going back to that lawyer.” Mr. Owens might have been an okay guy, but she still felt like he’d talked down to her at the end, and she wasn’t about to go back.

“So don’t,” Harry said. “Listen. He told you the company listed the trust as an asset, right? Well, if it’s listed, that means it’s got to be part of the court’s records. All that stuff’s public record.”

Harry had dated a reporter for the local newspaper a few months ago. The guy had tried to impress Harry with how important his job was, but it turned out all he did was report births, deaths, court filings, and an occasional human interest story so dull it usually put Harry to sleep. But Harry had learned more about how the court system worked than Jodi ever would. What would it hurt to look? At least then she’d have some idea what, besides her father the popsicle, was at stake.

“You feel like driving me up there?” she asked.

Harry patted her on the arm. “That’s my good girl,” he said, and finished off the last of his slice of pizza.

Jodi just looked at hers.

My good girl.

Wasn’t that what a father was supposed to say?

The bankruptcy court was in one of the crumbling old buildings downtown, one complete with marble columns covered in decades of pigeon droppings, not that far from the law offices of Billingsly, Wendham & Owens. Jodi felt a little more self-assured this time venturing into the world populated by lawyers. Maybe because she had Harry with her, and he’d actually worn what he called his straight clothes-khaki slacks, a navy silk polo shirt, and freshly polished loafers. Nothing like blending in with the natives.

Jodi let Harry guide her through the maze of room after room of files and paperwork. Harry explained that most of the documents were on computer, but there was a per-page charge for even looking at the files online. This was supposed to save the court staff from wasting time dealing with paper files and the public. But Harry just had to flirt with one of the clerks, a pretty girl he had no interest in, to get her to bring the appropriate file for his “sister” to look at.

“Just one of my many useful bartending skills,” Harry whispered to Jodi after the clerk left with a little giggle.

It took a while for them to find the right document in the huge Cryonomics bankruptcy file. If Mr. Owens was getting paid by the word, he was making a mint on this case.

After forty-five minutes of diligent reading, Jodi finally saw the name that had been in Mr. Owens’s letter-Andrew Sommersby. Her father’s name. Jodi hadn’t even known his name until she read it in The Letter. Now here it was again in an official court document. Jodi’s last name was Carnahan. Her mother’s name.

“Wow,” Jodi said. “He’s really there.”

She realized that up until this moment, she’d still thought that this was some kind of big joke. But here it was, in the court’s own file. She didn’t think anyone played jokes with a court.

Her father’s name was on a chart with twenty-two other names. Each name listed a date of interment and next of kin. Jodi’s name wasn’t listed next to her father’s, but her mother’s was. Someone-maybe the clerk-had handwritten “deceased” next to her mother’s name.

“Have you found anything on the trust?” Harry asked.

Jodi shook her head. It had to be here somewhere, right?

Three pages later, Jodi found another chart, this one listing all the trusts. Twenty-three trusts, twenty-three frozen people. None of the trusts was named Sommersby. None of the trusts identified the person it supported. How was she supposed to tell what her father would have named his trust when she didn’t know anything at all about Andrew Sommersby?

Jodi scanned the list again, frustrated.

Next to her, Harry let out a low whistle. “My good God, will you look at that? he whispered.

She looked at the column Harry was pointing at, the one she’d been ignoring in her search for the right name. What she saw were rows of numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. Numbers with more zeros than Jodi had ever seen in her life.

She felt the blood drain out of her face.

Her father’s trust could be any one of the ones on this page. And any one of these trusts could fund not only four years of college, but probably graduate and post-graduate school too, not to mention a nice house and a car of her own.

Holy shit.

Did this mean she was rich?

Jodi dialed Artemus Owens’s phone number from a pay phone in the courthouse lobby. She tried to ignore the way her fingers trembled and her stomach clenched around the soda she’d had in Harry’s car.

Harry stood next to her, leaning in to listen.

“About this trust fund,” she said once Mr. Owens answered the phone. “Does it belong to Cryonomics?”

She heard Mr. Owens let out a deep breath. “That would depend on the terms of the trust document. You realize I can’t advise you.”

Jodi rubbed her forehead. She wished her hands would stop trembling. “I know that,” she said. “I just need to know whether the whole thing belongs to that company, or whether, you know-” She took her own deep breath. “-it might actually belong to me because he’s my father.”

There. She said it.

Harry gave her a little hug.

“Figured out how much is at stake, did you?” Mr. Owens asked. He didn’t sound upset. In fact, Jodi thought she could almost hear the smile in his voice.

“Yeah,” Jodi said. “So, does it?”

She heard a rustle of papers on the other end of the line, then the tapping of computer keys.

“Well, I can tell you this,” Mr. Owens said. “It’s public record, and you could probably have found out for yourself if you’d kept reading what you’ve obviously looked at. Cryonomics is only claiming income from the trust as an asset. In other words, the trust earns money, and that income is what the company’s been using to maintain your father. The figures are annual estimates, rounded to the nearest dollar.”

“Wait.” Jodi was having a hard time comprehending what he was saying. “What’s on the chart… that was only income?”

“Yes.”

Jodi dropped the phone. She thought Harry might have caught it before it hit the floor, but she couldn’t focus on that. All she could see were numbers followed by lots of zeros, and that wasn’t even the real number.

Her father must have been a millionaire. At least.

And he’d never provided anything for her mother, or for her.

She walked away from the phone, leaving Harry to deal with Mr. Owens. All of a sudden she was too angry to talk to anyone.

Her father had left her mother to deal with a life of penny-pinching and never having enough to make ends meet. A life of macaroni and cheese dinners, and coupon clipping, and keeping the heat at sixty in the winter just to save on the electric bill.