Chapter 4 - The Money Behind Her Name

The following morning, I asked Mara to explain every number she could verify in the documents my father had kept.

I wanted a simple answer to a simple question.

How could a company that needed almost half a million dollars in emergency financing afford to make large payments to an employee's separate business?

Mara spread the financial schedule across her conference table. Daniel sat beside me with Dad's records arranged in chronological order. Helen waited in the reception area; she'd offered to stay as long as I needed.

"First," Mara said, "we should be careful about assumptions. A payment to a vendor isn't proof of wrongdoing. We need to know whether services were provided, approved, and properly recorded."

She showed me six invoices listed under Thornton Brand Studio. They totaled a little over $62,000 in the previous year. The descriptions were vague: strategic positioning, creative coordination, campaign development.

"Rebecca works in marketing at Grant's firm," I said. "Why would he pay her separately for the same type of work?"

"There could be a legitimate explanation. We're going to ask for it."

The packet Dad had received contained more than a loan proposal. It included an abbreviated profit-and-loss statement and a list of funds Grant said he had contributed personally to keep the company operating.

One figure made me stop.

Owner support: $86,400.

The amount felt familiar.

I'd seen it in our accounts, but not all at once. Four months of transfers, spaced among ordinary bills and tax payments. Grant had explained some as temporary cash-management moves between our checking and savings accounts.

I had accepted that explanation because the accounts were joint and he handled most of our long-term investment paperwork.

At Helen's kitchen table that evening, I downloaded twelve months of statements.

The transfers were there.

$18,000.

$22,400.

$16,000.

$30,000.

Eighty-six thousand four hundred dollars, moving from our shared savings into an account associated with his firm.

I had never been asked whether I wanted to invest that money.

I called the bank to confirm the destination and began assembling transaction records for Mara. The representative explained that because Grant was a joint account holder, his ability to transfer money was different from his right to use my signature on a secured loan document. Both issues needed to be addressed, but they were not the same issue.

That distinction mattered.

I wasn't going to accuse him of a crime simply because he'd spent money I believed should have required a discussion. I was going to document what he'd done and let the proper process determine the consequences.

Grant texted that afternoon.

We need to stop involving outsiders. You're destroying the company over a misunderstanding.

I stared at the message.

A misunderstanding was a forgotten anniversary. It was buying the wrong brand of coffee.

It was not removing your wife's birthday gift from her closet, giving it to your mistress, and using her name on a financial authorization she had never seen.

I saved the text.

Then I wrote back: Please communicate about finances through my attorney.

He replied almost immediately.

Your father never liked me as much as he pretended.

That sentence angered me more than I'd expected.

Dad had welcomed Grant into our family. He'd included him at holidays, recommended him to business acquaintances, and asked about his plans as though they mattered. He'd spent fifteen years offering Grant the benefit of the doubt.

But Dad had also known when something was wrong.

And when he asked for an honest explanation, Grant had apparently treated the request as an insult.

Daniel called the next day with an appointment to review the correspondence my father had left in his office. I asked Helen to come with me.

Dad's study hadn't been cleared out. His books still lined the shelves. A pair of reading glasses rested beside a small stack of unopened mail. The sight of his chair nearly undid me.

Daniel had organized the relevant records into a folder, but he'd left everything else exactly where Dad had placed it.

At the top was an email from Grant requesting a meeting about a temporary guarantee. The next item was a calendar entry. Grant and Rebecca had visited Dad together at his office nine days before the funeral, four days before he died.

Rebecca's name appeared on the invitation.

She hadn't been an incidental assistant. She'd come to explain the financial presentation.

A handwritten page beneath the invitation contained Dad's familiar numbered questions.

Why home security if company recovery is certain?

Why is Natalie not here?

Who authorized her signature?

What services justify Thornton payments?

The questions weren't accusations. They were the questions of a man refusing to sign away his judgment.

At the bottom, Dad had underlined one sentence twice.

Grant insists Natalie knows. I do not believe him.

I sat in Dad's chair and ran one finger beneath his handwriting.

"He was trying to protect me," I said.

Daniel nodded. "He was trying to understand the situation before he frightened you. And he regretted waiting."

"Did he know about the affair?"

"He suspected it," Daniel said. "He told me he had seen Grant and Rebecca behave with a familiarity that concerned him. But he didn't want to tell you something he couldn't establish. The financial documents were what he could put in front of you."

There was one more item in the folder: a request Dad had sent Grant after the meeting, asking him to withdraw the disputed consent and provide a written explanation before the end of the week.

Dad had copied Rebecca.

Her reply was only two lines.

I understand the concern. Grant will handle the response.

So Rebecca had known that my father was questioning the papers.

She had known before he died.

She had worn my dress to his funeral anyway.

I folded the page carefully and handed it to Daniel.

"I want to speak to her," I said.

Mara had already warned me not to corner witnesses or pressure anyone involved in a financial dispute. I knew that. I wasn't looking for an argument in a parking lot.

I wanted Rebecca to know that my father's questions hadn't died with him.

"Then let us arrange it properly," Daniel replied. "With someone present and a written record."

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For the first time since the funeral, I felt something other than helplessness.

I had questions. My father had left evidence. And the woman who'd sat beside my husband in my dress might have answers neither of them wanted me to hear.