Chapter 5 - THE MONEY TRAILAt 6:15 the following morning, Ethan left for the office.
At 6:17, I told him I was coming with him.
He stopped in the doorway.
"Claire, I need you to stay with Lily."
"Rebecca can watch her for an hour."
"She's exhausted."
"And I'm not?"
His expression softened.
"I didn't mean that."
"I know what you meant. But I am not sitting in this cottage waiting for another secret to explode."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
"Okay."
Rebecca offered to stay with both children until we returned, provided we kept in contact and the cottage security system remained armed.
Sarah Mitchell had already been informed.
The police had been updated about the threat involving Noah, and Rebecca planned to make a formal report about Patricia's intimidation that morning.
By seven, Ethan and I were driving toward the office.
Snow fell lightly across the windshield.
Neither of us spoke much.
Finally, I broke the silence.
"How much of our money has gone to your parents?"
Ethan kept his eyes on the road.
"I told you. About thirty thousand a year."
"That's the monthly support."
"Yes."
"What about the house?"
He sighed.
"Claire—"
"I want the full number."
He was quiet.
Then he answered.
"Between the purchase, repairs, support, and loan interest, a little over eight hundred thousand dollars."
My breath caught.
Eight hundred thousand.
Not all of it was money he'd given away, because he owned a property worth something.
But the amount still stunned me.
"We could have bought a bigger home," I whispered.
"I know."
"We could have started Lily's college fund years earlier."
"I know."
"How many nights did you come home exhausted because you were working to cover bills I didn't even know existed?"
His hands tightened around the steering wheel.
"Too many."
I stared out the window.
Then I asked the question I'd been avoiding.
"Did your mother ever thank you?"
He laughed quietly.
"Sometimes."
"When?"
"When she wanted something else."
That answer hurt more than I expected.
Not because Patricia didn't deserve consequences.
She did.
But because I suddenly understood how long Ethan had been trapped.
His mother had raised him to believe that love was something he had to earn through obedience.
And when he became successful, she'd turned that obedience into a source of income.
I reached across the console.
He took my hand.
"We're going to fix this," he said.
"We're going to try," I corrected.
He nodded.
"Fair."
When we arrived at Carter & Peterson Construction, Mark was waiting beside the front door.
He looked exhausted.
"You're not going to like what I found."
Ethan didn't waste time.
"Show me."
We followed Mark upstairs.
The company occupied a converted brick warehouse with polished concrete floors and enormous windows.
I'd always loved the place.
Ethan and Mark had started with two desks, a borrowed printer, and a dream of building affordable commercial spaces for small businesses.
Now they employed twenty-seven people.
Those jobs mattered.
Their families mattered.
And someone had put all of it at risk.
Mark opened a spreadsheet.
"Northstar Property Consultants was created eleven months ago."
"Who owns it?" Ethan asked.
"An LLC registered through an agent. We're still tracing the actual people behind it."
"Any previous payments?"
Mark pointed to the screen.
"That's the problem."
There had been seven smaller payments.
$8,500.
$12,000.
$6,750.
$19,000.
The list continued.
All labeled as consulting fees.
All approved through Ethan's credentials.
Ethan shook his head.
"I never saw these."
Mark looked at him grimly.
"Then someone has access to your account."
I studied the dates.
One caught my attention.
"Wait."
Both men turned.
"This payment was authorized on September fourteenth."
"Yes," Mark said.
"Ethan was in the hospital that day."
Silence.
I remembered it clearly.
Lily had fallen from the playground climbing frame and fractured her wrist.
We'd spent almost seven hours at the children's hospital.
Ethan hadn't left our side.
He'd held our little girl while the doctor examined her.
I'd taken photographs of Lily smiling through tears after receiving her bright purple cast.
Mark stared at the screen.
"Are you certain?"
"Absolutely."
Ethan looked at me.
"You remember the date?"
"Of course I remember. It was the day Lily asked the doctor whether unicorns could break their legs."
Despite everything, he almost smiled.
Mark leaned back.
"That could help establish the approval wasn't made by Ethan."
He pulled up the access logs.
Then he frowned.
"Interesting."
"What?"
"The login came from an internal workstation."
"Which one?"
Mark zoomed in.
"Accounting office. Terminal four."
Ethan stared.
"That's Denise's computer."
Denise Walker had been their bookkeeper for nearly eight years.
She was a quiet woman in her fifties who brought homemade cookies to office holiday parties.
I'd never heard Ethan speak badly of her.
"Where is she?" I asked.
Mark hesitated.
"She called in sick yesterday."
"On December twenty-sixth?" Ethan asked.
"Yes."
"And today?"
"She hasn't answered."
I felt a familiar chill.
People kept disappearing.
Patricia.
Now Denise.
And somewhere in the middle was a company Ethan had never heard of.
A lawyer and a forensic accountant were brought in that morning.
Ethan and Mark froze the suspicious payment, revoked access credentials, contacted their bank's fraud department, and began preserving the records.
They didn't accuse Denise immediately.
Sarah urged them not to confront anyone before investigators had secured the evidence.
By noon, the bank confirmed that the pending transfer had been stopped.
But the smaller transfers were already gone.
More than eighty thousand dollars had left the business over the previous year.
And there was no guarantee any of it could be recovered.
I sat in Ethan's office watching him stare at the numbers.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I frowned.
"For what?"
"For dragging you into another mess."
I looked at him.
"You didn't ask someone to steal from your company."
"No. But I gave my family access they never should have had."
"What kind of access?"
He rubbed his eyes.
"Years ago, Mom handled some administrative paperwork for me when the business was small. She knew personal information, account details, passwords I used back then."
I closed my eyes.
"Ethan."
"I changed most of them."
"Most?"
He looked ashamed.
I wanted to be angry.
Part of me was angry.
But the more I learned, the clearer it became that this situation was bigger than foolish passwords.
Someone had used years of family trust as an opportunity.
My phone buzzed.
A message from an unfamiliar Facebook account.
YOU THINK YOUR HUSBAND IS A HERO? ASK HIM ABOUT THE WOMAN WHO DIED IN HIS BUILDING.
Attached was a photograph of a newspaper clipping.
The headline read:
LOCAL WOMAN DIES AFTER APARTMENT BUILDING FIRE. INVESTIGATION CONTINUES.
The article was dated nearly seven years earlier.
The woman's name was Angela Mercer.
My stomach tightened.
I showed Ethan.
He stared at the screen.
Then he sat down heavily.
"Angela."
"Who was she?"
He didn't answer.
"Ethan?"
His voice came out rough.
"She was a tenant in one of our earliest renovation projects."
"What happened?"
"There was a fire."
"I can see that."
He looked at me.
"She died."
I waited.
"Was your company responsible?"
"The fire marshal found an electrical fault in an old section of the building. Our crew hadn't worked on that system."
"Then why is someone sending this?"
Ethan dragged a hand down his face.
"Because there was a lawsuit."
I sat across from him.
"And?"
"It was dismissed after an independent investigation. The building owner settled separately with the family."
"Did you know Angela?"
He nodded.
"She used to bring coffee to the crew. She had a little boy."
A heaviness filled my chest.
"What happened to him?"
"I don't know."
Ethan looked away.
"I tried to find out, but the family asked everyone connected to the property to stay away."
I studied his face.
There was genuine sorrow there.
Not the panic of a man caught in a lie.
Something else.
Guilt over a tragedy he couldn't undo.
"Who would use this against you?" I asked.
"Someone who knows how much it still bothers me."
I thought of Madison.
Of Patricia.
Of the forged letters.
Then Ethan's phone rang.
Mark answered it from the doorway.
"Sarah's on line two."
Ethan picked up.
"Sarah?"
He listened.
His expression changed.
"What?"
I straightened.
He switched to speaker.
Sarah's voice was calm but serious.
"The court hasn't ruled on Patricia's claims, but her attorney filed a petition this morning regarding the property. We're preparing our response."
Ethan rubbed his forehead.
"Fine."
"There's more. Someone contacted a local reporter and supplied documents suggesting your company misappropriated funds."
"Those documents are fraudulent."
"I understand. But the story may go public."
I stared at the floor.
Patricia's Facebook video was already spreading.
Now Ethan's business was in danger.
Sarah continued.
"I also received a call from the local police."
My stomach tightened.
"About what?"
"They found Denise Walker."
Ethan stood.
"Where?"
Sarah hesitated.
"At the airport."
"Was she leaving town?"
"Yes."
"Did she say anything?"
Sarah's voice dropped.
"According to the investigator, she said she was afraid of someone named Madison Carter."
Ethan froze.
I looked at him.
His sister.
Again.
"And there's one more thing," Sarah added.
"Denise told investigators she wasn't the person who planned the transfers."
Ethan gripped the edge of his desk.
"Then who was?"
Sarah answered slowly.
"She said the instructions came from someone who had threatened to reveal a secret about her family."
I leaned forward.
"What secret?"
"Her son has a serious gambling debt. Whoever contacted her apparently knew the amount and the people demanding repayment."
Ethan looked sick.
Then Sarah said the words none of us expected.
"Denise claims Patricia wasn't involved in the financial scheme at all."
The room fell silent.
"Then who?" Ethan asked.
Sarah paused.
"She named Richard."
My breath caught.
Ethan shook his head.
"No."
Sarah continued.
"And investigators have found preliminary evidence that someone using his identity helped establish Northstar Property Consultants."
Ethan lowered himself into his chair.
His father.
The quiet man who'd brought us the letters.
The man who'd spent years apologizing for Patricia's behavior.
The man who'd pretended to be powerless.
Could he have been the person taking the money?
Before Ethan could speak, another email arrived.
This time, from Richard himself.
The subject line contained only four words.
YOU NEED THE TRUTH.
And the message said:
Meet me at the old church at five. Come alone. Don't tell your mother.
Ethan read it twice.
Then he looked at me.
"Why would Dad tell me not to inform Mom?"
I stared at the email.
Because I was beginning to understand something.
May you like
Richard wasn't simply afraid of Patricia.
He might have been afraid of what she'd discover.
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