The Letters Between Us

Emily slept for three hours.

At six in the morning, she woke on Rachel's guest-room sofa with her graduation dress folded over a chair and the silver storage key digging into her palm.

She had fallen asleep holding it.

For a moment, she did not know where she was.

Then she saw the cardboard box of returned letters on the floor.

Everything came back.

Daniel was in the kitchen making coffee.

Rachel had gone upstairs sometime after midnight. Claire had left alone after Mark stopped answering his phone.

Emily stood in the doorway and watched Daniel measure grounds into an old metal filter.

“You still make it too strong,” she said.

He looked over his shoulder.

“You remember?”

“Mom used to complain.”

A faint smile appeared and disappeared.

“She was right.”

Emily sat at the kitchen table.

“Are you going to tell me Mark stole from you?”

Daniel poured water into the machine.

“I already told you I believed he did.”

“That's different.”

“Yes.”

“Do you still believe it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you prove it?”

“No.”

The honesty irritated her.

“You had bank statements.”

“Bank statements show money moved. They don't show who benefited.”

“You said the insurer paid a claim.”

“They paid because employee dishonesty was one possible cause of the loss. That isn't the same as proving Mark took it.”

Emily rubbed her forehead.

“So after all that, we may find nothing today.”

“We may find old furniture and mice.”

“You kept paying for a storage unit full of old furniture for nine years?”

Daniel set a mug in front of her.

“I am not claiming it was financially intelligent.”

Despite herself, Emily almost smiled.

He noticed and wisely said nothing.

She took a sip and made a face.

“This is terrible.”

“I warned you.”

“You didn't.”

“I allowed history to warn you.”

That time she did smile.

It frightened her how natural it felt.

She put the mug down.

“Don't make me like you too quickly.”

Daniel's expression softened.

“I won't.”

The answer erased the smile.

Emily looked toward the living room.

“Did you know things about me?”

“What things?”

“Over the years.”

Daniel leaned against the counter.

“Some.”

“How?”

“Rachel.”

Emily frowned.

“She told you?”

“Only public things after you turned fifteen. School awards. Soccer. When you got into college.”

“She wasn't supposed to.”

“I asked her to stop more than once.”

“But you kept listening.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He stared into his coffee.

“Because knowing you were alive and angry at me was easier than knowing nothing.”

Emily looked away.

“I wasn't always angry.”

“I know.”

“No, you don't.”

“You're right.”

She picked up the key.

“Let's go.”

The storage facility sat beside an industrial road at the edge of town.

Daniel signed them in at a glass booth, and the manager squinted at the account screen.

“You haven't accessed this unit in three years.”

Daniel nodded.

“Sounds right.”

The manager looked at Emily.

“Big cleanout?”

“Maybe,” she said.

Unit 317 was on the second floor.

The silver key opened the padlock after Daniel sprayed it with lubricant borrowed from the office.

When the metal door rolled upward, dust lifted into the morning light.

Emily expected chaos.

Instead, the unit was arranged in narrow aisles.

Boxes were labeled OFFICE FILES, TAX, TOOLS, EMILY, KITCHEN, PHOTOS.

She stared at the box with her name.

Daniel followed her gaze.

“You don't have to open that.”

“What's in it?”

“Things from your room that were at my apartment after the separation. A few toys. School papers. The model plane.”

“You kept it?”

“Yes.”

Emily walked past it.

“Business records first.”

Daniel nodded.

They spent an hour opening banker boxes.

Most contained invoices, tax filings, payroll summaries, and contracts Emily could not interpret.

Daniel explained when she asked and stopped when she did not.

At nine-thirty, Claire arrived.

Emily heard her voice from the hallway.

“Are you in there?”

Daniel went still.

Emily stepped around a stack of boxes.

“We're here.”

Claire entered wearing jeans and a gray sweater, her hair pulled into a loose knot. She looked older than she had at the ceremony.

“Where's Mark?” Emily asked.

“I don't know.”

“He didn't come home?”

“No.”

Daniel looked down at a file.

Claire saw him and stiffened.

“You could have told me about the insurance claim.”

Daniel did not look up.

“You could have told me you were returning my letters.”

Emily held up both hands.

“Not yet.”

Claire exhaled.

“Fine.”

She stepped into the aisle.

“What are we looking for?”

“North Lake Consulting,” Emily said. “HMR Services. Bexley Supply. Anything involving Mark. Anything involving the money he gave you.”

Claire flinched at the last part.

“I brought something.”

She opened her purse and removed an old checkbook register.

Daniel looked at it.

“What is that?”

“The account Mark helped me open after I left.”

Emily took it.

The first deposit was twenty-eight thousand dollars.

“Do you have the bank statements?”

“No. The account closed years ago.”

“Did Mark write you a check?”

Claire shook her head.

“He wired it.”

“From where?”

“I don't know.”

Daniel spoke without looking at her.

“You never asked?”

“I was leaving you. I needed an attorney and an apartment.”

“So you took twenty-eight thousand dollars from my employee and didn't ask where it came from?”

“He was my friend.”

Daniel finally looked at her.

“He was my controller.”

Claire's eyes flashed.

“And you were breaking doors.”

Daniel's face went rigid.

Emily stepped between them.

“Both things can be true.”

They fell silent.

Emily pointed at a stack.

“Mom, take those.”

Claire stared at her daughter, then obeyed.

Forty minutes later, she found the first useful document.

“Emily.”

Her voice sounded different.

Emily crossed the aisle.

Claire was holding a photocopy of a cashier's check.

Payee: North Lake Consulting.

Amount: $27,850.

Date: March ninth.

One day after Daniel had ordered Mark to stop further disbursements.

Daniel took the page.

“I never saw this.”

Claire pointed at the authorization line.

It carried Daniel's initials.

DC.

Emily looked at him.

“Did you approve it?”

“No.”

Claire stared.

“You're sure?”

“I stopped all North Lake payments on March eighth.”

“Could you have forgotten?”

“No.”

Emily studied the initials.

“How hard would they be to copy?”

Daniel's mouth tightened.

“Not hard.”

Claire sat on a box.

The amount was almost exactly the amount Mark had transferred to her days later.

“No,” she whispered.

Emily heard it.

“What?”

Claire shook her head.

“No. That's coincidence.”

Daniel did not say anything.

That restraint seemed to anger her.

“Say it.”

“What?”

“Say you were right.”

“I don't know that I was.”

“You've been waiting nine years to say it.”

“No.”

Daniel's voice was tired.

“I've been waiting nine years to stop caring whether I was.”

Claire looked away.

Emily took a photograph of the check.

“We need bank records.”

Daniel nodded.

“I can ask the bank, but old corporate records may take time.”

Claire looked at the page again.

“Mark might have copies.”

“Would he give them to us?” Emily asked.

“No.”

The certainty in Claire's voice chilled her.

Daniel moved to another stack.

“Then we keep looking.”

At eleven, Emily found a file folder with her name.

It was wedged between tax records from consecutive years.

She opened it expecting school documents.

Inside was a brokerage statement.

ACCOUNT NAME: EMILY CARTER EDUCATION FUND.

Balance: $46,218.77.

The statement was dated three months before the separation.

Emily stared at it.

“Dad?”

Daniel looked over.

His face changed when he saw the folder.

“I wondered where that went.”

“What is it?”

“Your college account.”

Claire stood quickly.

“What college account?”

Daniel looked at her.

“The one we started when she was born.”

“I never saw this.”

“You signed the original paperwork.”

“I mean after we separated.”

Daniel took the statement.

“My attorney requested that it be preserved for Emily. I thought it was.”

Emily stared at both of them.

“You told me there was no college fund.”

Claire looked genuinely confused.

“There wasn't. I paid your tuition from savings and loans.”

Daniel frowned.

“I assumed you used this first.”

“I didn't know it existed anymore.”

Emily felt a new wave of exhaustion.

“What happened to forty-six thousand dollars?”

No one answered.

Daniel searched the folder.

At the back was a transfer form.

The account had been liquidated six weeks after Claire filed for divorce.

Funds transferred to a custodial account at MidCounty Bank.

The authorization carried Daniel's signature.

He stared at it.

“That isn't mine.”

Claire looked up sharply.

“What?”

Daniel handed her the page.

“My middle initial is wrong.”

Emily leaned over.

The signature read Daniel A. Carter.

“What is your middle name?”

“Joseph.”

Claire's face drained of color.

Emily pointed to a box on the form.

“Who prepared it?”

At the bottom, beneath a line marked Authorized Representative, was a typed name.

Mark Morgan.

Nobody spoke.

Claire sat down again.

“He told me you emptied everything before the divorce.”

Daniel's voice was barely audible.

“I didn't.”

“He showed me statements.”

“What statements?”

“Checking. Business accounts. He said you were moving money.”

“I moved money because vendors were freezing our credit.”

“He said—”

“I know what he said.”

Emily picked up the transfer form.

“Can we trace the custodial account?”

Claire looked at her.

“Maybe.”

“Who had access?”

“If it was opened during the divorce, I don't know.”

Daniel's jaw tightened.

“Mark might.”

Emily put the document with the cashier's check.

“We need someone who understands these records and isn't one of you.”

Daniel nodded.

“There was a bookkeeper. Helen Price.”

Claire frowned.

“I remember her.”

“She left a month before the company closed.”

“Why?” Emily asked.

Daniel's expression changed.

“She said she was tired of being caught between me and Mark.”

“Did you ever ask her what that meant?”

“I tried. She wouldn't talk.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

Rachel, who had arrived carrying sandwiches, spoke from the doorway.

“I do.”

Everyone turned.

Rachel held up her phone.

“She sent me a Christmas card last year. She lives in Brookfield.”

Emily stared at her aunt.

“Why would your brother's old bookkeeper send you a Christmas card?”

Rachel set the sandwiches down.

“Because Helen and I went to high school together.”

Daniel blinked.

“You never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

Emily gave a short, disbelieving laugh.

“Apparently that's our family motto.”

Rachel unlocked her phone.

“I can call her.”

Daniel shook his head.

“She won't talk to me.”

Rachel looked at Emily.

“She might talk to you.”

Emily hesitated.

She had graduated less than twenty-four hours earlier. She was supposed to be packing for a weekend trip with friends. Instead, she was standing in a dusty storage unit investigating a vanished college fund and a man she had called her stepfather for nearly a decade.

She looked at Claire.

Her mother was still holding the forged transfer form.

“Did you intercept every letter?” Emily asked suddenly.

Claire looked up.

“Most of them.”

“Most?”

“A few never reached the house.”

“Did Mark ever collect the mail?”

Claire stared at the paper in her hands.

“Yes.”

Emily felt cold.

Daniel stepped closer, but did not touch her.