Chapter 3: Where the Money Went
Priya turned her laptop toward me.
The company name looked ordinary, the kind of name designed to disappear into a stack of invoices. I read it twice, then looked back at the transfer entry.
“That’s Theo’s company?”
“It’s a company connected to him,” Priya said. “Let’s keep that distinction clear.”
She opened a second window. The information there came from a corporate registry, not from the company’s own books. Theo’s name appeared in the public record.
“Does that mean he received the money?” I asked.
“It means there’s a documented connection between him and the company. It doesn’t tell us who controlled the receiving account on the day of the transfer, who authorized it, or what the money was for.”
I leaned closer to the screen. “But the transfer itself happened.”
“The lender’s records show that funds were released and that a portion later went to an account listed under this company’s name. That part is supported by the records we have. The purpose and the decision-maker aren’t established yet.”
I wanted to ask how anyone could move that much money without leaving a clear trail. Instead, I watched Priya draw a line between two entries on her screen.
“Here’s the release,” she said. “And here’s the later transfer. The dates and references connect them. But we don’t have the company’s internal records, and we don’t know what happened after the funds arrived.”
“So we know where some of it went.”
“We know the account named as its destination.”
The correction was careful, almost painfully so. I understood why she kept making it. A name on a record wasn’t a conviction. A transfer wasn’t proof of a scheme. If I let anger fill in the blanks, I could end up believing something the evidence didn’t support.
Still, the company’s name on the screen belonged to the orbit of Bridget’s life. Theo was supposed to be the person she was building a future with. Frank had said she and Theo needed a place to start their marriage. Now a portion of the borrowed money appeared to have gone to a company connected to him.
“Could it have been a legitimate payment?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Could Theo have known about the loan?”
“Yes.”
“Could he have known nothing about it?”
“That’s also possible.”
I sat back. Three answers, none of them an answer.
Priya closed the registry window and returned to the transaction summary. She had organized the records into columns: what the lender’s documents confirmed, what an outside source supported, and what remained an assumption. The borrowed funds had moved through more than one transaction. There were fees, transfers, and scheduled payments. The entries were plain and impersonal, but I kept imagining the people behind them.
Frank had sent the guarantee to the lender. The submission record showed that. But it did not show who had made the signature resembling mine, and it did not tell us what Theo knew.
“Could the company’s records clear this up?” I asked.
“They might help establish the purpose of the transfer and who approved it. They could also show nothing useful. Either way, if relevant records exist, we want them preserved.”
“Before they disappear.”
“Before they’re altered or destroyed, whether deliberately or as part of routine business. We don’t have proof anyone plans to do that. A preservation request is a precaution, not an accusation.”
She opened a draft letter. It was addressed to the company’s registered office. The language was restrained: preserve records relating to the identified transfers, including accounting entries, invoices, authorizations, and relevant communications. It did not claim Theo had committed a crime or that the company had done anything wrong.
Priya had prepared a separate request to the lender. That one asked the lender to retain the records it had not yet supplied, including any available information related to the disputed submission and the movement of funds. The lender’s review was still underway, and she wanted the existing material protected while questions remained.
“Do you want me to send these?” she asked.
I read each letter carefully. The word preserve appeared several times. So did the phrase alleged unauthorized borrowing. Nothing in the letters treated the investigator’s theory as settled fact.
I thought of the bags on the driveway, the rain soaking my books, and Frank telling me I should have been smart enough to put my name on the deed. The old anger rose quickly. For a moment, I imagined putting his name beside every accusation and letting the world decide.
Then I looked again at the records.
“I want the documents to speak for themselves,” I said.
“That’s why we’re doing this carefully.”
I nodded. “Send them.”
Priya emailed both requests through counsel. She saved copies in the case file and noted when they were sent. No dramatic warning went out. No threat. Just a written demand that potentially relevant records be kept intact while the lender reviewed the disputed guarantee.
The quietness of it unsettled me. I’d expected the truth, if we found it, to arrive with a crash. Instead, it was a row in a spreadsheet, a registry entry, a letter sent to an office somewhere in Mississauga.
“Now what?” I asked.
“We wait for responses and keep verifying what we can. We don’t contact Theo or your father about this without a plan.”
“And Bridget?”
Priya paused before answering. “If she reaches out, you can decide whether you’re ready to speak with her. But don’t use the transaction as proof of something we haven’t established.”
I looked at the company name again.
“I’m not trying to punish her.”
“I know.”
“But if Theo knew, I can’t pretend this is just paperwork.”
“No,” Priya said gently. “You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t matter. You just have to be honest about what you know and what you don’t.”
On the drive back to the lake house, I kept thinking about Bridget in my burgundy cardigan. About the way she had asked who would pay her car lease, as if my firing had disrupted an arrangement instead of cost me my home.
I had canceled the payment because I couldn’t keep financing people who treated my help as something they were entitled to. I had done it before I knew about the company, before I knew the lender’s records might intersect with Theo’s business. Now the stopped payment felt tangled up with everything else.
I didn’t want the car lease to become a weapon in anyone’s hands—not mine, not theirs. But I couldn’t keep sending money simply to avoid being called selfish.
That evening, my phone lit up with Bridget’s name.
I watched it ring once, twice, then answered.
“What?” she said. Her voice was sharp enough to cut through the quiet room. “You really stopped paying my lease without even telling me?”
“I stopped paying it, yes.”
“The payment didn’t go through. I had to find out from the leasing company.”
“I’m sorry you found out that way. But I can’t keep paying it.”
“You’ve been paying it for a year and a half.”
“Eighteen months,” I said. “And I’m not doing it anymore.”
“So that’s it? You’re just done with all of us?”
I looked toward the dark window, where my own reflection hovered over the water.
“I’m done paying expenses I can’t afford and pretending nothing has changed.”
“Convenient,” she snapped. “You get fired, you vanish, and the rest of us are supposed to deal with the fallout.”
“I didn’t ask you to deal with my job loss. I asked Dad for one night to figure things out.”
She went quiet. For a moment, I thought she might hang up.
Then she said, “I want to meet you. Alone. No Dad, no Mom, no Theo.”
The anger in her voice hadn’t disappeared. But underneath it was something else—something tight and uncertain.
May you like
“Why alone?”
“Because I need to ask you something, and I don’t want anyone else answering for me.”
