Chương 12
“She created it.”
Samantha breathed out slowly.
“And your mother?”
“She knew about the pregnancy, the twins, the induction, and the hospital.”
Her face closed.
“I’m sorry.”
“For me?”
“For everybody.”
I looked at her.
She rubbed her thumb along the cardboard seam of her empty coffee cup.
“I hated you for a long time.”
“You had reason.”
“Apparently less reason than I thought.”
“I gave you plenty before the divorce.”
“Yes.”
There was no point pretending otherwise.
She stood.
“I should go.”
“Can I call the boys?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay.”
“You can text me.”
“Not twenty times a day.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You absolutely were.”
I almost argued.
Then I put my phone back in my pocket.
“Fine.”
She walked several steps before turning around.
“Ethan.”
“Yeah?”
“The paternity test is a good idea.”
I nodded.
“And there’s something else we need to discuss before you put your name on anything.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
She looked toward the parking lot where the boys had disappeared.
“The reason I lost the accounting job wasn’t only because I missed work.”
I waited.
Samantha shoved her hands into her jacket pockets.
“Someone reported me for financial misconduct.”
I frowned.
“Were you investigated?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I was cleared eventually.”
“Then why didn’t you go back?”
“Because the accusation followed me.”
“Who reported you?”
“That’s the part I never figured out.”
A cold suspicion moved through me.
Samantha saw it.
“I don’t know that Chloe had anything to do with it.”
“But you think someone did.”
“I think someone knew exactly which accusation would make an accounting firm suspend me immediately.”
I looked toward the road.
“And this happened when?”
“Two months after I met Martin.”
The timing was impossible to ignore.
Samantha pulled out her phone.
“I kept those records too.”
I stared at her.
For the first time that morning, the fear I had carried into the playground changed shape.
This was no longer only about years stolen from me.
Someone had spent those years making sure Samantha remained too exhausted, too broke, and too discredited to challenge the story they had built around us.
And if Chloe had done more than forge an email, ending our engagement might not have ended anything at all.
I did not answer immediately.
Samantha watched my face, then slipped her phone back into her pocket.
“Don’t build a theory before you have facts.”
“That advice would have been useful about five years ago.”
“It would have been useful to everyone.”
I nodded.
She started toward the parking lot.
“Send me the investigation records.”
“And the emails from Chloe.”
“I’ll send copies.”
“Everything.”
She stopped.
“Ethan, this is exactly what I’m talking about.”
“What?”
“You get angry and turn into a machine.”
I frowned.
“You did it during the divorce.”
“That was different.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She faced me fully.
“You decide there’s a problem, then you attack every piece of it until you feel like you’re doing something.”
“I’m trying to understand what happened.”
“I know.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The boys are the problem.”
The words struck me badly.
She saw it immediately.
“That came out wrong.”
“They’re not a problem.”
“I know.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“I mean they are the part that matters most.”
I waited.
“If you turn this into some war with Chloe and your mother, Lucas and Noah will eventually feel it.”
“I’m not going to involve them.”
“You don’t have to involve children directly for them to know something is wrong.”
Her voice softened.
“They notice when adults stop speaking.”
“They notice when phones get put facedown.”
“They notice when Mom cries in the bathroom and says she got shampoo in her eyes.”
I looked away.
“Did you do that?”
“Once.”
“Because of me?”
“Because of life.”
That answer was probably kinder than the truth.
I pushed my hands into my coat pockets.
“I won’t drag them into it.”
“Good.”
“But I’m not ignoring what happened to you.”
She gave me a tired look.
“You don’t owe me rescue.”
“I’m not trying to rescue you.”
“You offered to fix my job within ten minutes of learning I had one.”
“I said I could help.”
“Same disease.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
She almost did too.
Then she walked away.
Back at the hotel, the room smelled faintly of bleach and overheated air.
I put Noah’s potato-shaped rock on the nightstand beside the clock.
It looked absurdly important there.
At eleven twelve, Samantha emailed me a folder.
There were scanned letters, screenshots, a PDF of an internal investigation summary, and several old messages.
I opened the report first.
Halpern Financial had suspended her after an anonymous complaint alleged that she had manipulated reimbursement records and redirected small vendor payments.
The accusation was specific enough to trigger an immediate review.
The review found no diverted funds.
It also found that Samantha’s login credentials had been used from a workstation on a day she was documented as being home with a sick child.
That should have cleared her quickly.
Instead, the firm extended the suspension while internal security examined whether she had shared credentials.
I read the paragraph twice.
Then I called Samantha.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“What?”
“Sorry.”
“You sound like someone died.”
“I’m reading the report.”
Silence.
“They used your login when you weren’t there.”
“Yes.”
“Who had access?”
“A lot of people had access to the office.”
“No, to your credentials.”
“I didn’t share them.”
“Was your password saved anywhere?”
“Not intentionally.”
I leaned back against the headboard.
“Did investigators identify the workstation?”
“Yes.”
“Whose was it?”
“A temporary desk in the shared audit room.”
“Cameras?”
“The hallway camera was broken.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re building again.”
I exhaled.
“Fine.”
“Read the whole thing before calling me like a detective in a bad television show.”
“I have questions.”
“You always have questions.”
May you like
“That used to be one of the things you liked about me.”
“It was lower on the list than you remember.”
