Chapter 11: The Receipts
I stared at the account number on Martin’s screen.
The payment record showed a date after the sale closed and a destination account in Ranata’s name. It showed the amount, too. I read the number twice, but it didn’t tell me what had happened to the money after it left the affiliate.
“Is this enough to say she received it?” I asked.
“It’s enough to say the affiliate issued the payment to an account it identified as hers,” Martin said. “We’ve asked for confirmation from its bank. We still need to distinguish that from what happened next.”
My father leaned toward the screen.
“So there’s no doubt about the payment?”
“There’s a record of it being issued,” Martin said. “We’ll know more when we finish verifying the transaction. We shouldn’t claim more than the documents support.”
The accountant sat beside him with the selected bank pages spread across the table. She lined up the account numbers, not the dates. One belonged to the account that had received my parents’ transfers. Another appeared on pages showing money moved out. The destination for the affiliate’s payment was different from both.
“That’s what we can compare today,” she said. “The family transfers went into one account. The pages we have show some money moving into another. The affiliate records identify a separate account for its payment.”
Dad’s face tightened.
“So the payment wasn’t from the same account as our money.”
“These records show different accounts,” she replied. “They don’t show whether money was moved between them at some other time. And they don’t tell us the source of every deposit in the incomplete statements.”
Mom sat with both hands around a paper cup she hadn’t touched. She looked tired, but she didn’t look away from the documents.
“Could she have moved our money into that account later?” she asked.
“She could have moved money between accounts,” the accountant said. “But these pages don’t establish that she did. We’d need a complete history to trace it.”
There was no satisfaction in hearing that the payment was separate. If anything, the distinction made the uncertainty sharper. We had another documented fact, but no clean path from the money my parents had sent to what Ranata had done with it.
Martin turned the monitor toward himself and made a note.
“The agreement connects the affiliate payment to introduction and information-sharing services tied to closing,” he said. “The payment record connects the affiliate to an account in Ranata’s name. Neither document tells us how she used the parental transfers.”
Dad rubbed the edge of the envelope he had brought from home.
“I keep thinking there must be one page that explains all of this.”
“Maybe there is,” I said. “But we haven’t seen it.”
He looked at me, and I saw how much he wanted the answer to be simple. I wanted that, too. A single account, a single total, one explanation that would let us put the papers away and decide what came next.
But the records didn’t offer that. They showed where my parents’ money had first gone. They showed some movement between accounts. They showed an affiliate payment issued to a separate account. They did not show every transaction, every balance, or what Ranata had spent.
The accountant marked the pages she had reviewed and returned them to their folder without writing on the originals.
“From an accounting standpoint, I can document what’s visible and identify what’s missing,” she said. “I can’t certify a full accounting from selected pages.”
“Then what do we do?” Dad asked.
Martin folded his hands.
“We ask for the complete records. Through counsel. We give her a clear, reasonable deadline to respond. If she refuses, we can discuss formal options.”
He said it without raising his voice. That calmness made the choices sound less dramatic than they felt.
“What would formal options mean?” I asked.
“Depending on what records we can establish and what claims your attorney believes are supported, that could include a civil demand for an accounting or other relief. If a case were filed, there are procedures for seeking relevant records. There may also be agencies you can contact if you believe the evidence warrants a report.”
He paused before continuing.
“I can explain those routes. I can’t promise you’ll recover money, and I’m not going to declare from these pages that a crime occurred. That takes evidence and, if there’s a legal dispute, decisions made through the proper process.”
Mom lowered her eyes.
“I don’t want her arrested,” she said. “I want to know what happened.”
“I want the truth,” I said. “And I want the records preserved. Those things aren’t the same as deciding what punishment anyone deserves.”
The words came out more firmly than I expected. I had imagined this moment as anger: the grand confrontation, the sentence that finally made Ranata understand what she had done. But the longer I sat with the papers, the less interested I became in delivering a speech.
I wanted the account histories. I wanted the choices made in writing. I wanted an answer that didn’t change depending on who was asking.
Martin drafted the request while we watched. It called for complete statements for the accounts that had received my parents’ transfers and for the account identified in the affiliate payment record. It asked for records showing transfers between those accounts and documents reflecting any money Ranata claimed to have passed along to me or spent on my farm.
He read the draft aloud, stopping whenever a phrase implied more than the evidence showed.
When he finished, I asked him to add that we weren’t demanding an admission in place of records. We wanted the full account history and a written response to the discrepancies, not another family explanation offered from memory.
Martin added the sentence.
“Ten days?” he asked.
“Make the deadline clear,” I said. “And tell her we’ll consider her response before deciding what to do next.”
Dad looked at me.
“You’re giving her another chance.”
“I’m giving her a chance to produce records. That’s not the same thing.”
He nodded slowly. The distinction seemed to hurt him, but he didn’t argue.
By the time we left Martin’s office, my mother had finally taken a drink from her cup. My father carried the envelope with the original statements tucked inside, careful not to bend the pages. I took the folder containing copies of the affiliate documents.
At home, I put the folder beside my desk. The unopened May 14 email from Desmond was still where I had left it, preserved and unanswered. I didn’t open it. There was no need to turn an unknown into a story before we had a reason to do so.
For the next few days, I kept working through the practical pieces of the sale. The developer’s counsel had already confirmed that its reviewed file showed no record of Ranata being authorized to bind me or claim an interest in the land. That mattered. It did not settle every legal question, and Martin hadn’t told me it did. I kept the closing documents together and waited for the records we had requested.
The deadline passed without a complete set of statements.
Martin called when the response arrived. He asked whether I wanted him to read it to me over the phone or send it first so I could review it myself.
“Read it,” I said. “I’d rather hear exactly what it says.”
May you like
He opened the letter, then paused.
“Ranata’s attorney says she will not provide the statements without a negotiated agreement.”
