One night, after returning home from a fourteen-hour day, Naomi found Elena sitting beside the kitchen window holding an old photograph.
It showed a young Black man with a brilliant smile, wearing a white laboratory coat and standing beside an enormous electrical control cabinet.
Naomi recognized him immediately.
Her father.
Dr. Samuel Brooks.
The original founder of Northstar Grid Solutions.
A man whose name appeared in business magazines and engineering journals.
A man who had built a company worth billions.
And a man whose daughter was now counting subway fares while serving coffee to executives.
Naomi sat beside her mother.
“Why are you looking at that?”
Elena smiled sadly.
“Because I was remembering when he was young.”
Naomi stared at the photograph.
Samuel looked almost unrecognizable.
No gray hair.
No expensive suit.
Just a young engineer with a pencil behind one ear and a grin that seemed too large for his face.
“He looks happy.”
Elena nodded.
“He was.”
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Naomi asked the question she'd been carrying for most of her life.
“Why didn't he choose us?”
Elena closed her eyes.
The answer was complicated.
Far more complicated than Naomi knew.
And for years, Elena had tried to protect her daughter from the bitterness surrounding it.
Now she was running out of time.
She looked toward Naomi.
“Your father loved you.”
Naomi laughed without humor.
“He certainly had an unusual way of showing it.”
Elena's eyes filled.
“I know.”
She reached toward the photograph.
Then whispered.
“But there's something about his company you don't understand.”
Naomi frowned.
“What?”
Her mother hesitated.
Then opened a small wooden box that had been sitting beside her chair.
Inside were several letters tied with blue ribbon.
A bank envelope.
And a brass key.
Elena looked toward her daughter.
“Samuel left something for you.”
Naomi stared.
For a moment, she couldn't speak.
Then whispered.
“What do you mean?”
Elena took a breath.
“Something he wanted you to have when the time was right.”
Naomi looked toward the key.
Then back at her mother.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Tears filled Elena's eyes.
“Because I was afraid.”
Naomi stared.
“Of what?”
Her mother looked toward the photograph.
Then answered.
“Of the people who wanted your father to forget the promises he made before Northstar became rich.”
Samuel Brooks founded Northstar Grid Solutions in 1998, working from a rented industrial workshop in Newark.