Chương 6
That stopped me.
“You what?”
“The company covered them.”
“How?”
“We had your returns prepared.”
I stood again.
“You filed tax returns in my name?”
“We had to report the income.”
“You filed federal tax returns as me?”
“I signed as your authorized representative.”
“Were you my authorized representative?”
Another silence.
I felt something inside me settle into a colder shape.
“Dad, I need you to stop talking.”
“Claire—”
“Do not call me again.”
“Please don’t do anything yet.”
“Anything?”
“The wedding is in three weeks.”
I actually looked at the phone again, as if some visual defect might explain the sentence.
“You think the wedding is the emergency?”
“I think blowing this up right now will hurt a lot of people.”
“Then maybe you should have considered that before creating fake tax records.”
“They weren’t fake.”
“My consent was.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that now.”
“Because I know you’re angry.”
“You don’t know what I am.”
He did not argue.
Then he said, “Madison loves him.”
The name he avoided was Nathan.
“Does Nathan love the version of Madison who told him the truth?”
My father did not answer.
I ended the call.
My hands shook badly enough that I missed the button the first time.
For ten minutes, I did nothing.
Then I called Rebecca.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she said, “Write down everything you remember from that conversation now.”
“I remember all of it.”
“Write it down anyway.”
I opened a blank document.
“What about the tax returns?”
“We need transcripts.”
“He says they filed for me.”
“That matters.”
“How bad is this?”
“I’m not going to grade it over the phone.”
“Rebecca.”
“It may be serious.”
“May?”
“I’m a lawyer, Claire.”
“I know.”
“That means I disappoint people with cautious verbs.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It lasted maybe two seconds.
Then I put my forehead against my hand.
“I think Madison was involved.”
“We investigate that.”
“My dad says she created the email.”
“We verify it.”
“I want to call her.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because right now you have information and they do not know how much information you have.”
“That sounds manipulative.”
“It is strategic.”
“I don’t like strategic.”
“You work in risk analysis.”
“That’s different.”
“It rarely is.”
She told me to preserve my notes, forward nothing to family members, and avoid accessing any account that was not mine even if I could guess a password.
That last instruction offended me slightly.
“I wasn’t going to hack my fake email.”
“Good.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“Smart people become very creative when they’re angry.”
I wrote that down too, though I did not tell her.
The tax transcripts arrived nine days later.
Four returns had been filed in my name after I left home.
Two carried electronic filing authorizations I had never signed.
The income matched distributions from the store.
Taxes had been paid from an account connected to Vale & Daughter.
Rebecca brought in a tax attorney named Michael Hsu, who wore rumpled shirts and spoke with the distracted precision of someone permanently halfway through three calculations.
He reviewed the documents twice.
“You didn’t file these?”
“No.”
“You didn’t authorize anybody to file them?”
“No.”
“Did you receive notices from the IRS at any point?”
“No.”
He tapped one page.
“They used your parents’ address.”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
Rebecca gave him a look.
“What?”
Michael said.
“It is.”
He returned to the papers.
“This does not automatically tell us who prepared or transmitted everything, but there will be records.”
“Can we get them?”
“Yes.”
“How fast?”
He glanced at me over his glasses.
“Not wedding fast.”
I disliked him immediately.
Ten minutes later, I trusted him more because he refused to pretend bureaucracy cared about my calendar.
The week before the wedding, Rebecca received records from the acquisition process through counsel she had contacted on my behalf.
That was when Nathan stopped being merely Madison’s fiancé.
His firm had required certifications from the sellers concerning ownership.
Those certifications declared that no undisclosed person held any claim to the shares being transferred.
My supposed signature appeared on one of them.
Dated eleven months earlier.
Witnessed by Madison.
I stared at it until the letters blurred.
Rebecca sat across from me.
“This changes the issue for the buyer.”
“He doesn’t know.”
“We don’t know what he personally knows.”
“My father said he doesn’t.”
“Your father is not our verification system.”
I almost snapped at her.
Instead I pressed my palms against my knees.
“What happens now?”
“We notify buyer’s counsel.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
“Before the wedding?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the document again.
“If you do that, Nathan finds out.”
“Almost certainly.”
“And Madison will know I did it.”
“Yes.”
“Can we wait?”
Rebecca did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
“If the transaction continues while you know your consent may have been fabricated,” she said, “delay can create additional complications.”
“So the timing doesn’t matter.”
“The timing matters emotionally.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know.”
I stood and walked to the window.
The wedding was Saturday.
It was Wednesday afternoon.
Somewhere two hours away, Madison was probably confirming flowers and table assignments.
My mother was probably correcting somebody’s napkin choices.
My father was probably walking around the store pretending his chest did not hurt every time the phone rang.
“I spent twelve years trying not to become them,” I said.
Rebecca waited.
“If I send this now, part of me is doing it because I want to ruin her wedding.”
“That part can exist.”
I turned toward her.
“That’s not a very lawyer answer.”
“It isn’t legal advice.”
“What if revenge is influencing me?”
“Then don’t lie to yourself about it.”
She folded her arms.
“But revenge does not make a forged signature authentic.”
I looked down at the papers.
May you like
That sentence followed me home.
The next morning, I authorized Rebecca to notify Cole Harbor Capital’s counsel that I disputed the validity of documents bearing my signature and asserted a potential ownership interest in the shares involved in the acquisition.
