Chương 4
“That isn’t what you meant.”
“Goodbye, Bradley.”
“Sarah, wait.”
I ended the call.
Connor stared at me.
“Dad said not to go.”
“Yes.”
“Are we still going?”
“Yes.”
He looked relieved.
Then ashamed of being relieved.
I reached across the seat and brushed a piece of lint from his sweatshirt.
“You’re allowed to want to go.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to.”
“I know.”
Madison leaned toward him.
“I want to.”
Connor rolled his eyes.
“You want to go because Mom said London has parks.”
“And castles.”
“She never said castles.”
“London has castles somewhere.”
“It has a tower.”
“That counts.”
Their argument continued quietly while I unlocked my phone.
Harrison answered on the second ring.
“Tell me you’re alone.”
“Not exactly.”
“The kids?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll keep this careful.”
I watched taxis slide past in the next lane.
“What happened at the clinic?”
“The physician became concerned about inconsistencies between Tiffany’s reported history and information in her chart.”
“That sounds vague.”
“It is intentionally vague.”
“Did you know about the conception dates?”
“We had reason to question the timeline.”
My stomach tightened.
“We?”
“Harrison.”
“I know.”
He paused.
“I’m not trying to be clever.”
“Then don’t be.”
Another pause.
His voice softened.
“We received records from the real estate matter that included travel dates and communications between Bradley and Tiffany.”
“Communications from where?”
“Discovery related to the financial tracing.”
“You said you weren’t subpoenaing phones yet.”
“We didn’t.”
I waited.
“The brokerage turned over transaction communications voluntarily after receiving a preservation notice.”
“And?”
“There were messages between Bradley and Tiffany discussing the baby.”
I looked at Connor.
He was pretending not to listen.
“What kind of messages?”
“One where Tiffany told him she was six weeks pregnant.”
“When?”
“January ninth.”
I worked backward in my head.
Bradley had returned from Singapore on December twenty-ninth.
“That could still fit.”
“Possibly.”
“What doesn’t?”
“There was an earlier message.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“From Tiffany?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t want to quote private medical content in front of the children.”
“Then paraphrase.”
“She referenced missing a period before Bradley returned from Singapore.”
The traffic noise seemed to recede.
I stared at the city passing beyond the glass.
“How much before?”
“At least nine days.”
That did not prove paternity.
It did not prove infidelity.
It proved only that the story Bradley had been living inside had cracks.
But Harrison was not finished.
“There’s more.”
I almost told him to stop.
Instead, I said, “Go ahead.”
“One of the brokerage emails included a scanned identification document for a man named Lucas Reed.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“Who is that?”
“We’re still establishing that.”
“Why would his identification be in Bradley’s real estate file?”
“It wasn’t in Bradley’s file.”
I sat straighter.
“It was attached to an email from Tiffany.”
“For what?”
“A previous lease application for the condo she occupied before moving into the furnished place Bradley paid for.”
I looked down at the purchase photos again.
Tiffany beside Bradley.
Bradley’s hand behind her chair.
The comfort between them suddenly looked less like certainty and more like one arrangement among several.
“Lucas was on the lease?”
“As a co-applicant.”
“When?”
“The lease began eighteen months ago.”
Bradley and Tiffany had been together, as far as I knew, for eleven months.
“How long was Lucas there?”
“According to the property manager, until early January.”
I swallowed.
“Early January.”
“Yes.”
“And Tiffany told Bradley she was pregnant January ninth.”
“Yes.”
I pressed my fingertips against my forehead.
The answer was beginning to take shape, but Harrison had spent enough years in litigation not to let shape become fact.
“We do not know paternity,” he said.
“I know.”
“We do not know whether Lucas and Tiffany were romantically involved during that period.”
“I know.”
“We do know Bradley represented certain expenses as business-related while paying housing costs connected to Tiffany.”
“That part matters to me.”
“Yes.”
The Mercedes slowed near a line of traffic.
An ambulance passed on the shoulder, siren rising and falling.
Madison covered her ears until it disappeared.
“What about the children’s education account?” I asked.
Harrison’s tone changed.
“That is the larger problem.”
“For him?”
“For everyone, depending on how the bank handles it.”
“I didn’t authorize those withdrawals.”
“I know.”
“Then how did he do it?”
“We believe he submitted an old custodial designation.”
“That designation expired.”
“Yes.”
“The bank should have rejected it.”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t they?”
“We’re finding out.”
I heard papers moving on his end.
“There may have been an internal processing error.”
“Meaning?”
“Someone saw Bradley’s name on historical documents and failed to verify his current authority.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It sounds negligent.”
My mouth went dry.
“How much is gone?”
“One hundred thousand dollars from the education account.”
“I saw that.”
“There may be another transfer.”
I looked down immediately at the folder.
“It isn’t in here.”
“It posted this morning.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five thousand.”
My chest tightened.
“To where?”
“An escrow reserve associated with the condo purchase.”
I closed the folder.
For the first time all morning, anger arrived cleanly.
Not sadness.
Not humiliation.
Anger.
Bradley had taken money my father left for our children and moved it toward a home for Tiffany.
Whether he believed it was temporary did not matter.
Whether he intended to replace it did not matter.
Connor’s camp had been too expensive.
Madison’s shoes could wait.
But there had apparently been room for marble countertops overlooking the river.
“Can the transfer be stopped?”
“We’ve requested a freeze.”
“Requested?”
“The bank’s fraud department has it.”
“That money belongs to the kids.”
“I know.”
“No, Harrison.”
My voice rose enough that Connor looked at me.
I lowered it.
“That money is theirs.”
“I understand.”
“You need to stop it.”
“We are doing everything available today.”
I hated the calmness in his voice because I needed someone to be as angry as I was.
May you like
Then I hated myself for that.
Lawyers were useful precisely because they were not family.
