Chapter 9 - THE BUSINESS HAD BEEN FAILING FOR YEARS
“What else did you lie about?”
Ryan exhaled.
“My business didn’t simply collapse.”
“What does that mean?”
“Someone had been moving money between accounts without my approval.”
“Your mother?”
“I thought so.”
“But?”
“She couldn’t have made some of the transfers.”
“Who had access?”
“My accountant.”
“Marcus?”
“Yes.”
I remembered Ryan speaking to Marcus on the hidden recording.
“What are you telling me?”
“That I lied about how much trouble the company was in.”
“That’s not exactly new information.”
“I also lied about when the trouble started.”
“When?”
A long silence.
“Before Dad died.”
Ryan’s father had died almost four years earlier.
More than a year before mine.
“That makes no sense. Your business was doing well.”
“I thought it was.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“There was a payment.”
“What payment?”
“A transfer into my company three years ago. Marcus coded it as investment capital.”
“How much?”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.”
My mouth went dry.
“From whom?”
“I only found the original source this morning.”
He paused.
Then said:
“Your father.”
I couldn’t speak.
Dad had never liked Ryan’s company.
He once called it “a boat with too many holes.”
He would never have invested seventy-five thousand dollars.
At least, that was what I believed.
“Why would Dad send you money?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask him?”
“I never knew he sent it.”
Across Megan’s backyard, Sophie accidentally spilled birdseed and laughed as sparrows surrounded her.
Ordinary life.
Quiet life.
I had once thought those things were boring.
Now they looked priceless.
A memory surfaced.
During Dad’s final winter, he once told me:
Ryan is carrying something he doesn’t know how to put down.
I assumed he meant stress.
Now I wasn’t sure.
“I have to go.”
“I understand.”
I ended the call and immediately phoned Evelyn.
“I know about the seventy-five thousand.”
There was a pause.
“So you know.”
“You knew?”
“I confirmed the transfer twenty minutes ago.”
“Why did Dad send it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then why were you calling me?”
Another pause.
“We found something in your father’s archived legal files.”
“What?”
“A sealed letter.”
“To Ryan?”
“No.”
“To me?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
May you like
Evelyn’s answer made me stop breathing.
“Patricia.”
