Chapter 5
The café Elaine chose had windows on two sides and a bell over the door that announced every new arrival.
I got there early and took a table where I could see the entrance. The coffee cooled untouched between my hands. When Elaine came in, she scanned the room before she spotted me. She looked like she’d slept badly—though not as badly as I had.
She sat without taking off her coat.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Then why are you?”
Her eyes flicked toward the window. “Because you asked the right question.”
She laid her purse across her lap, holding its handles in both hands. I remembered the warning in her message: someone was watching the office. I didn’t ask whether anyone had followed her here. We both knew the windows offered no promise of privacy.
“What did Vivian order?” I asked.
Elaine’s mouth tightened. “Changes to the ledger. Before Preston filed.”
“Changes to the entry for the money from our savings?”
She didn’t answer at once. A server crossed behind her with a tray of steaming mugs. Elaine waited until the clink of cups faded.
“Vivian wanted the accounts cleaned up quickly,” she said. “She said there couldn’t be loose ends when the divorce papers were filed.”
I felt the words settle in me, cold and exact. Not a confession about every hand that had touched the money. Not an explanation for the missing paperwork. But the first human voice to put Vivian’s instructions beside the timing.
“Did she tell you what to call the transfer?”
“I’m not giving you company records.”
“I didn’t ask for records.”
“You’re asking me to take sides.”
“I’m asking what happened.”
“And if Vivian finds out I spoke to you, I could lose my job.” Elaine’s voice sharpened, then dropped again. “I have rent. I have people who depend on me. You don’t get to decide that telling the truth is easy for me.”
Shame rose hot beneath my collar. I had brought my questions and called them reasonable, as though reason made them weightless.
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t get to decide.”
She looked at me, wary of the apology.
“But I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter,” I continued. “That money came from our savings. Vivian ordered changes before Preston filed. And now the ledger calls it a repayment without anything attached to explain why.”
Elaine’s fingers tightened around her purse handles.
“I can’t give you files.”
“Would you tell the truth if someone asked you under oath?”
The question made her go still. For one second, I saw the answer in her face—or thought I did. Then she pulled the purse closer to her body.
“I don’t know what I’d do.”
“I’m not asking you to decide now.”
“You say that like there’s time.”
I glanced at the pale light through the café windows. “Isn’t there?”
Elaine looked past me, toward the entrance. “I have to go.”
She stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor. I wanted to catch her sleeve, to ask what she was afraid Vivian might do. Instead I stayed seated.
Elaine paused with her hand on the strap of her purse.
“Don’t make me the only person who knows what happened,” she said.
Then she was gone, the bell over the door trembling after her.
At home, I set the briefcase on the dining table but didn’t open it. For years, that table had collected grocery lists, holiday seating charts, and notes about which relatives couldn’t be trusted beside which relatives. I had made plans there to keep Preston’s family comfortable. Now the empty chairs seemed to be waiting for witnesses.
The knock came just before sunset.
Preston stood outside with his hands in his coat pockets. He didn’t smile. I stepped aside, and he came in as if he still knew where everything belonged.
“You shouldn’t come without asking,” I said.
“I needed to talk to you alone.”
“You could have called.”
“I didn’t want this in writing.”
That sentence changed the air between us.
He looked at the briefcase on the table. “You’ve been talking to Elaine.”
I didn’t ask how he knew. His gaze held on the case, as if the papers inside might answer for me.
“She called me,” I said.
“Amelia, whatever she told you, you can’t fix this by turning it into a fight with my family.”
“I didn’t start a fight.”
“You’re asking questions at the company.”
“I asked whether an entry had supporting paperwork.”
“And now you’re involving Elaine.”
“She came to meet me.”
Preston rubbed his thumb along the seam of his pocket. “I can make this easier.”
“For whom?”
“For both of us.” He took a folded page from his coat but didn’t offer it. “There’s room to settle comfortably. You’d have what you need to start over. A clean break. No more hearings, no more digging through company accounts.”
“What does ‘comfortably’ mean?”
“We can work that out.”
“Without looking at where our money went?”
His face tightened. “You don’t need to do this.”
The hurt came before the anger. Not because he was asking me to stop, but because some small, stubborn part of me had still been waiting for him to say he would help me find the truth.
I stood on the other side of the table from him. “Is this about protecting the dignity of our marriage, or hiding the missing money?”
His eyes met mine. Then slid away.
“Those aren’t the only choices,” he said.
“Then tell me what the other one is.”
He said nothing. The room seemed to hold its breath around us. Once, his silence had been a space I rushed to fill—with a gentler question, a compromise, an offer to make dinner and try again tomorrow.
I let it stay empty.
Preston lowered the folded page. “I’m trying to keep this from getting uglier.”
“Then answer me.”
His jaw worked as if he had the words ready and couldn’t bear the sound of them. At last, he put the page back in his coat.
“I thought you wanted a peaceful life,” he said.
“I did.”
He studied me, looking, perhaps, for the wife who would turn that answer into permission. I couldn’t give it to him.
He left without answering my question. The front door shut with a soft click that somehow sounded more final than a slam.
I stayed where I was until the briefcase’s brass clasp caught the fading light. Then my phone vibrated on the table.
Elaine: They’re preparing to move the disputed funds again.
May you like
A second message appeared before I could answer.
The transfer is scheduled.
