Chương 9
“Did you ever meet with anyone about Harbor Meridian?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“A guy named Martin.”
“Last name?”
“Keene, I think.”
“What did he do?”
“Some kind of corporate setup.”
“Did you sign documents?”
“Yes.”
“As what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tiffany.”
“I’m serious.”
Her voice rose.
“I signed where Bradley told me to sign.”
The words hit me hard enough that I had to sit down.
Not because I pitied her.
Because I had done exactly the same thing.
Yellow tabs.
Kitchen counter.
Soup boiling over.
Tell me what this is.
Just administrative.
“Did you read them?” I asked.
“No.”
She began crying harder.
“I know how stupid that sounds.”
“It sounds familiar.”
There was a long pause.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Sarah.”
“What was the company supposed to do?”
“Own property.”
“Whose property?”
“The condo.”
“Anything else?”
“He talked about investments.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much about a company you signed documents for.”
Her voice sharpened.
“I was pregnant and he was telling me we were building a future.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
For the first time, there was anger in her voice.
Not at me.
At herself, maybe.
Or at the room she had locked herself inside.
“I believed him,” she said.
I looked at Connor.
He was showing Madison something on his phone.
“Did you know he was using money from the children?”
“What?”
Her surprise sounded real.
“The children’s education account.”
“No.”
“Did he ever mention it?”
“No.”
“Did he ever say where the condo money came from?”
“He said business distributions.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course he did.
That was exactly the kind of phrase Bradley used when he wanted a sentence to sound too boring to question.
“Why did you send me the document?” I asked.
“Because this morning I saw your name on another one.”
My eyes opened.
“What another one?”
“A loan paper.”
“What loan?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you see it?”
“At the condo.”
“You were at the condo this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Before the clinic?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been staying there.”
That was new.
The property was not supposed to have closed yet according to Harrison’s records.
“You’re living there?”
“Not officially.”
“What does that mean?”
“The seller gave Bradley early access.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see the loan paper in the condo?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In a folder in his office.”
My pulse accelerated.
“What else was in the folder?”
“I didn’t go through all of it.”
“Why were you going through any of it?”
Another silence.
“Because Lucas called me last night.”
There it was.
The story shifted again.
“What did he want?”
“He asked why my name was on a credit inquiry.”
I sat very still.
“His name?”
“No.”
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
“And he knew?”
“He still gets alerts from an identity monitoring service we signed up for together after our old apartment building had a data breach.”
“That sounds like something he should have told you sooner.”
“He did.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“And you ignored him?”
“I blocked him.”
“Why?”
“Because Bradley told me Lucas was trying to ruin things.”
The answer came with shame.
I almost asked whether Bradley had also told her I was unstable.
I did not need to.
“Did Bradley know Lucas contacted you?”
“Not at first.”
“Then?”
“I told him after Lucas emailed me.”
“And what did Bradley say?”
“That Lucas was obsessed.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
Margaret knocked again.
“Tiffany, this is ridiculous.”
A security officer said something I could not hear.
Tiffany lowered her voice.
“Sarah, there’s something else.”
I looked at the clock.
Boarding would begin in less than an hour.
“What?”
“The document I sent you isn’t the only one with your signature.”
My stomach tightened.
“How many?”
“I saw at least four.”
“What were they?”
“One was the company thing.”
“One was a loan form.”
She swallowed audibly.
“One was something from the bank.”
“And the fourth?”
“I don’t know.”
“You looked at four documents and don’t know what one of them was?”
“It had Connor’s name on it.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“What?”
“I saw Connor’s name.”
“What kind of document?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tiffany.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Was Madison’s name there?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“Where is that folder now?”
“At the condo.”
“Is Bradley going there?”
“I don’t know.”
I stood up.
“Harrison needs that folder preserved.”
“Who’s Harrison?”
“My attorney.”
“You have an attorney?”
“Yes.”
A bitter little laugh came through the phone.
“Of course you do.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
She was quiet.
Then she said, “Bradley told me you were barely functioning.”
I almost smiled.
“What else did he tell you?”
“That you didn’t understand finances.”
I looked at the forged signature on my screen.
“That’s funny.”
“He said you depended on him for everything.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Yes.”
There was no hesitation.
I appreciated it more than I wanted to.
“And now?”
“Now I think he needed both of us to believe different versions of the same story.”
The sentence settled between us.
It was not clever.
It was worse.
It sounded true.
“Do not go back to the condo,” I said.
“I need my things.”
“Not alone.”
“I have nowhere else to go.”
“Call a friend.”
“I stopped talking to most of them.”
“Why?”
She did not answer.
I already knew.
Bradley liked people isolated because isolation made contradiction harder to find.
“Call someone anyway,” I said.
“I can’t call Lucas.”
“I didn’t tell you to.”
“He might be the baby’s father.”
Her voice broke completely then.
I closed my eyes.
“Does Bradley know that?”
“No.”
“He knows there was someone else.”
“Yes.”
“But not who.”
“No.”
“And you don’t know paternity.”
“No.”
“Then stop letting his family turn uncertainty into a verdict.”
Tiffany inhaled shakily.
“Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not.”
The answer was sharper than I intended.
May you like
I lowered my voice.
“I’m trying to keep this from becoming more chaotic than it already is.”
