“My father’s pension?”
“No.”
She shook her head carefully.
“Something called Asterion.”
The name tugged at a distant memory.
My father, Thomas Mercer, had been an electrical engineer. Quiet. Methodical. The kind of man who labeled screws in baby-food jars and kept warranties long after the appliances they belonged to had died.
When I was a teenager, he had done occasional consulting work for a tiny communications-security company run by one of his college friends.
Asterion Secure Systems.
I remembered the logo on old folders in his study.
A blue triangle crossed by a silver line.
“That company died years ago,” I said.
“That’s what Ryan told me after your father died.”
“When did you ask him?”
“During probate. Ryan offered to help with the paperwork.”
Of course he had.
Ryan had a degree in accounting and spent the first years of our marriage working in corporate finance before becoming chief financial officer for a network of charitable foundations.
