Chapter 8
Melissa’s whisper stayed between us after Erin returned with the transmission record.
“I want to talk to you alone,” Melissa said.
Thomas’s chair shifted beside mine. He didn’t answer for me. That mattered.
“No,” I said. “If you have something to show us, give it to Thomas.”
“Claire, I’m trying to help.”
“You can help without getting me alone.”
For a moment, the office held only the soft hiss of the heater and the faint scrape of paper as Erin set the copy on the table. Melissa’s breath caught. I wondered if she was crying. I didn’t ask.
“Bring whatever you have through counsel,” I said. “And don’t ask me to trust your description of it. Let the records speak.”
Melissa left without another word. I heard her shoes cross the carpet, then the door close. The silence she left behind felt different from the silence at the bus stop. This one didn’t mean I was abandoned. It meant I had chosen not to follow.
By late afternoon, Thomas had taken us to his office. The leather folder rested beneath my hand, its familiar worn edge a small anchor while voices and papers moved around me. Daniel waited outside, as I’d asked. Thomas stayed at the table with me, reviewing the documents Erin had sent.
A call came in from another attorney. Melissa had delivered a flash drive through counsel. She said it contained Grant’s second ledger. She denied hiding it from me—or helping Grant conceal money.
Thomas didn’t plug it in right away.
“Did her attorney provide anything about where these files came from?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “We’ll preserve the drive and document what we receive. I can compare the contents with records we already have, but that won’t establish who created every file.”
“Then compare what you can.”
I heard the computer’s small chime, followed by the quiet tapping of keys. Thomas read descriptions aloud as he opened the files: dates, account endings, transfer amounts, notes beside entries. Numbers had always sounded deceptively clean. A few digits could cross a room without showing the hands that moved them.
Then his voice stopped.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Draft emails.”
He read the first one slowly. Melissa had questioned a transfer marked as a property expense. In the draft, she asked Grant why the amount was larger than the invoice and whether the payment had gone to the right account.
I felt my fingers tighten around the folder.
“What did he tell her?”
“The reply says it was temporary. That the money would be replaced before the sale.”
“And her answer?”
Thomas paused.
“She approved the transfer.”
A dull, heavy ache opened beneath my ribs. Not surprise. Something worse: the moment an excuse ran out of room.
“Are there more?”
“Yes.”
The next draft showed Melissa asking about another payment. Again, Grant promised repayment. Again, she approved it. Thomas checked the amounts against the bank records. The entries aligned with transfers already under review.
“Does the ledger show where every dollar went?” I asked.
“No. It gives us another record to compare, not a complete route. Some entries point to the business account we’ve already identified. Others need tracing.”
“So she questioned it.”
“Some of it,” he said. “And approved several transfers.”
Melissa had said she didn’t know what Grant was moving. Maybe she hadn’t known the full amount. But she had known enough to ask—and then enough to sign.
Thomas opened another file. Paper rustled as he printed it.
“This looks like a note to herself,” he said. “It says, ‘Hold Claire’s mail until Grant sorts the statements.’”
My hand left the folder.
All those envelopes she had told me were unimportant. Each time I asked whether anything had arrived, she’d answered before I could ask what it was. I had remembered the words but not been able to prove what had been in the mail. Now the file gave that memory a hard edge.
“Does it say what statements?” I asked.
“No.”
“Does it say she threw anything away?”
“No.”
I breathed in, careful and shallow. The facts were enough without giving them more shape than they had.
“Keep the note with the file,” I said. “Don’t call it something we can’t prove.”
“I won’t.”
Thomas found one final item: a voice memo. Its file name was a date followed by the word “office.” He checked the date against the documents on the drive, then told me the recording’s origin still needed to be established. He couldn’t say who had made it or whether anyone had edited it.
“Play it,” I said.
A faint click came through the speakers. Then Grant’s voice, close and unmistakable to my ears—not because I could see him, but because I knew the measured way he turned a sentence into an order.
“Keep Claire away from the mail,” he said. “If she sees those statements, she’ll start asking questions.”
There was a pause, filled by a low rustle.
Melissa’s voice answered. “She already is.”
“Then tell her there’s nothing important. You can handle the envelopes.”
I shut my eyes. Darkness did not soften the words. It only took away the temptation to look for a face that might make them less real.
The recording continued.
“What about the trust?” Melissa asked.
Grant’s voice sharpened. “She doesn’t need to know about the trust agreement.”
“She’s a beneficiary.”
“She doesn’t understand the language.”
A short silence followed. Then he spoke again, quieter, but no less certain.
“And she must never learn what her father wrote in that agreement.”
The memo clicked off.
Nobody moved. The heater hissed. Under my palm, the folder’s leather edge felt rough and steady, the way it had on the night I stood alone beside the road.
I mourned the sister I had believed would keep my mail safe. I mourned her without mistaking grief for proof of innocence.
“What did my father write?” I asked.
Thomas’s voice softened. “We don’t know from this recording. We’ll need to examine the agreement and its history carefully.”
May you like
I nodded once. The recording had not answered the question. It had made the question harder to ignore.
“Then we find out,” I said.
