Chapter 10: His Version of the Truth
I didn’t answer Julian.
I saved the photograph, then set my phone facedown before I could be pulled into the familiar trap of explaining myself to someone who had already decided what I meant. The baby shifted low in my belly. I pressed a palm there and breathed through the tightness—not a contraction, I told myself, just my body reacting to the message.
Mara sat across from me at Nora’s office, reading Julian’s text without touching the screen.
“Don’t reply,” she said. “Not even to tell him it isn’t true. We’ll preserve the message and ask the lender for the full submission record.”
“I want him to know I see what he’s doing.”
“He knows you saw it. That’s why he sent it.”
I hated that she was right. I photographed the screen with my own phone, making sure the time and sender showed, then forwarded the image to Mara. The gesture felt small beside the signature Julian had placed beneath printed words, but at least this was my choice and my name was mine.
By lunchtime, Julian had made his version of the story official.
His attorney filed a statement saying we had discussed using my investment account during our marriage. Julian described it as a shared conversation about saving Riverline, then claimed I had been willing to help. He mentioned neither Nora’s warning about the request in my name nor the earlier inquiry that had appeared months before our divorce.
Mara read the filing aloud. I listened for something I recognized—not because I thought Julian had invented every word, but because the truth could be bent without being entirely made up.
We had talked about Riverline. We had talked about his fear that the project would fail. We had talked about money in the general, blurry way married people sometimes did when one person’s dream began swallowing all the air in a room.
We had not agreed to pledge my father’s account.
“He’s turning a conversation into consent,” I said.
Mara closed the filing. “That distinction matters.”
The old account folder sat beside my overnight bag. I pulled it out, my fingers catching on the blue cover. My father’s papers had been gathered for years in his orderly handwriting, each statement tucked behind the next. I opened to a page from before the divorce and found my signature at the bottom.
The familiar slant made something inside me ache. I had signed that statement without thinking twice. It was a routine acknowledgment, nothing more. But the signature on Julian’s photograph had borrowed from it: the long first stroke, the narrow loop, the little upward finish.
It was close enough to make my stomach turn.
Not the same.
I laid the old statement beside the photograph on Mara’s tablet. Julian’s version of my name looked like someone had watched me write it and practiced until the differences seemed too small to matter.
“He copied it from this,” I whispered.
Mara examined both, careful not to call it proof. “It may be the source. We’ll preserve the original and have the lender provide the document they received.”
I didn’t want my father’s name pulled into Julian’s story. But his account had been mine long before Julian knew there was anything to take. My father had written my name on those statements because the money belonged to me—not because it could be lent to someone who had learned how to imitate it.
Mara’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen, then put it on speaker.
Melissa’s voice came through thin and hurried.
“Julian says I called you to turn you against him.”
“You haven’t spoken to me by phone,” Mara said.
“I know. I’m telling you I didn’t call anyone about what I showed Audrey. He’s already asking what I gave you.”
The room tightened around her words. I pictured Julian standing over Melissa’s shoulder, demanding an answer, turning her choice to share those messages into another accusation.
“Did he ask you to delete anything?” Mara said.
A pause.
“He said the thread doesn’t belong in this. Then he told me if I cared about Riverline, I’d stop making things worse.”
Melissa’s breath caught. Beneath my own hand, the baby rolled, a slow pressure that made me straighten in my chair.
“The export you sent is already preserved,” Mara told her. “Don’t alter the conversation.”
“I know. I’m sending the original export again, and a recording of me scrolling through the thread. So there’s no question about what’s there.”
A notification appeared on Mara’s phone a moment later. She checked the incoming files, then looked at me.
“It matches the export we already authenticated,” she said. “She’s preserving the source on her end, too.”
That didn’t make Melissa innocent. She had initiated the old inquiry. She had helped assemble the path that brought my name to a lender. But now Julian was pressing her to erase the part that showed what he had told her, and she had chosen not to.
My phone buzzed again.
For one impossible second, I thought it was Julian. Instead, the lender’s number flashed across the screen. Mara answered and identified herself, then listened without interrupting. I watched her face, waiting for it to loosen or harden.
It hardened.
“What letter?” she asked. “When did it arrive?”
My hand tightened around the account folder.
May you like
Mara looked at me, and I saw the answer before she gave it.
The lender had received a notarized consent letter. Its signature appeared to match mine, too.
