Chapter 4 - WHAT AMY HAD BEEN HIDING
I wanted to know why Amy had never shown me the notebook.
Her answer hurt.
“Because every time I tried to tell you something about your mother, you defended her.”
I opened my mouth.
Then closed it.
She was right.
I remembered dozens of moments differently now.
Amy saying Teresa came over too often.
Me saying my mother was only helping.
Amy asking why Teresa controlled the grocery money.
Me saying she had always been good with finances.
Amy saying Teresa spoke to her disrespectfully.
Me answering that Teresa had a difficult personality.
Every time Amy reached toward me, I had pushed the problem back toward her.
“I’m sorry.”
Amy looked exhausted.
“I don’t need you to say sorry tonight.”
“What do you need?”
“I need you to believe what happens next.”
So I listened.
Teresa had gradually changed after Frederick was born.
At first, she brought soup.
Then diapers.
Then she started asking questions.
How much did our mortgage cost?
How much money was in savings?
Was Amy’s name on the house?
Had we written a will?
Who would inherit everything if something happened to me?
Amy told her those questions were inappropriate.
Teresa laughed.
Then the insults started.
A stay-at-home mother was “living for free.”
Amy’s clothes were “paid for by Connor.”
The house was “really Connor’s.”
Eventually Teresa began calling it “our family property.”
Not my property.
Not Amy’s home.
Our family property.
The three thousand dollars I sent Teresa each month rarely reached Amy.
Teresa bought some groceries.
Maybe four hundred dollars’ worth.
The rest disappeared.
I pulled twelve months of transfers.
Thirty-six thousand dollars.
I had handed her thirty-six thousand dollars while Amy was cutting coupons to save money on formula.
Something inside me snapped.
The next morning, Rachel filed emergency fraud notices with the county recorder, our mortgage lender, and every major financial account connected to me.
Then she contacted investigators.
By afternoon, the detective assigned to the case had a name.
Detective Marcus Reed.
He was calm.
Older.
And immediately suspicious of one detail.
“Why would Mason leave through the side gate with the documents instead of simply driving away before police arrived?”
I had no answer.
Reed did.
“Because he was delivering them to somebody.”
He checked neighborhood camera footage.
At 6:47 p.m., sixteen minutes before police arrived, a dark sedan parked two streets away.
It remained there for forty-three minutes.
Nobody entered my party from that vehicle.
Nobody got out.
But when Mason ran toward the side gate, he kept looking toward the same street.
Reed froze the footage.
The sedan’s driver was visible through the windshield.
Rachel leaned closer.
Then she whispered one name.
“Oh, no.”
The man waiting for my stolen documents was someone I knew.
May you like
Someone who had been inside my financial life for years.
TOBE CONTINUED
