Chương 9
I looked at her.
Scott had never mentioned business debt.
“What business debt?”
Jenna went quiet.
“His consulting company.”
“He doesn’t own a consulting company.”
“Yes, he does.”
“No.”
“He opened it last year.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“What is it called?”
“Ellison Strategic Partners.”
The name was so pompous and so perfectly Scott that for one bizarre second I nearly laughed.
“What does it do?”
“I don’t really know.”
“You were planning to move into his house and you don’t know what his company does?”
“He said corporate restructuring.”
Scott worked as a regional operations director.
He talked constantly about restructuring.
It would have sounded plausible to anyone who did not share his tax returns.
“Does he have employees?”
“I never met any.”
“Clients?”
“He mentioned two.”
“Names?”
“I don’t remember.”
Rebecca was already typing the company name into her phone.
Her face tightened.
She turned the screen toward me.
A state business registry entry showed the company had been formed fourteen months earlier.
Registered agent: Scott Ellison.
Mailing address: 218 Willow Glen Drive, Unit 4C.
The apartment was not merely where he intended to send me.
It was already tied to him.
I read the address twice.
“Jenna.”
“Yes?”
“Who found the apartment?”
“He did.”
“When?”
“Months ago.”
The room went very still.
“How many months?”
“January.”
It was August.
I looked toward the stairs, toward the bedroom where I had spent winter wondering whether Scott’s silence meant work stress, age, disappointment, or simply the slow erosion of marriage.
He had been building an exit while I was still trying to decide whether we needed counseling.
“Why would he rent it now if he already used the address?”
“I thought it was a mailbox arrangement before.”
“Did you ever go there?”
“No.”
Rebecca turned her phone toward herself again.
“Claire.”
Her voice had gone flat.
“What?”
She had opened the public business filing details.
“There’s another name on the company.”
I stepped closer.
Below Scott’s name, under authorized officer, was mine.
Claire Mercer Ellison.
I stared until the letters stopped looking like language.
“I never signed anything for that company.”
Jenna made a small sound through the phone.
“What?”
“You’re listed?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“Scott said you knew about it.”
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“Apparently I’ve had a very busy year.”
Rebecca touched the screen.
“Look at the filing date.”
I did.
The company had been registered two days after our sixteenth anniversary.
That anniversary had passed with Scott in Denver for what he called an emergency operations meeting.
I had ordered takeout for one and watched half a movie before falling asleep on the couch.
“Jenna,” I said, “when did your relationship with Scott start?”
She did not answer.
I asked again.
“March.”
“This March?”
“Yes.”
The company had existed almost a year before her.
The apartment address had been connected to it before she entered the picture.
For the first time, the affair moved out of the center entirely.
Whatever Scott had been doing had not begun with Jenna.
She had simply arrived while it was already underway.
My phone buzzed with another incoming call.
Maya.
I told Jenna not to delete anything and ended the call.
Then I answered Maya.
“I was about to call you,” I said.
“So was I.”
Her tone stopped me.
“What happened?”
“I received preliminary documentation from the brokerage.”
I gripped the phone.
“The distribution?”
“Yes.”
Rebecca watched my face.
Maya continued carefully.
“Claire, the pending transfer is not from the account containing your father’s inheritance.”
I sat down again.
“Then where is it coming from?”
“A retirement account.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
I stopped breathing.
“There’s approximately two hundred and forty thousand dollars involved in the first request.”
The same amount Jenna had just named.
“And there is a second transfer request being processed separately.”
“How much?”
Maya hesitated.
“Four hundred and eighty-six thousand.”
Rebecca swore.
I could hear my own pulse.
“That can’t be mine.”
“Not entirely.”
“What does that mean?”
“It appears assets from more than one account were consolidated before the transfer request.”
I looked at the business filing still glowing on Rebecca’s phone.
“To Harbor Ridge?”
“Yes.”
“In Scott’s name?”
“No.”
That answer frightened me more than yes would have.
“Whose name?”
Maya took a breath.
“The receiving account is registered to Ellison Strategic Partners.”
I stared at my own name beneath Scott’s on the state filing.
“Maya.”
“I’m here.”
“I’m listed as an officer of that company.”
There was a long silence.
“Did you authorize that?”
“No.”
“Did you sign formation documents?”
“No.”
“Did you knowingly conduct business through it?”
“No.”
Maya’s voice became very controlled.
“Then do not contact Scott again tonight.”
I looked at the dark windows.
“Why?”
“Because this is no longer only a divorce issue.”
A car slowed outside.
Headlights moved across the living-room wall.
Rebecca turned toward the window.
The car passed.
Maya continued.
“I want you to preserve every document, message, and account record you have.”
“And Claire?”
“Yes.”
“Scott may not be trying to remove you from the marriage.”
I looked at the box with my name written across it.
“He may be trying to leave you holding part of whatever he did.”
I stared at Maya’s sentence as if it had been placed on the table between us.
Rebecca stopped moving.
Even the refrigerator motor seemed louder.
“What exactly could I be holding?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
“It isn’t meant to be.”
Maya asked whether I had ever opened a business credit card for Ellison Strategic Partners.
“No.”
“Applied for financing?”
“No.”
“Signed vendor agreements?”
“No.”
“Guaranteed a loan?”
“No.”
“Then tomorrow we start checking whether anyone says you did.”
I closed my eyes.
Rebecca sat across from me with both hands wrapped around her water glass.
“What should she do tonight?” she asked.
May you like
Maya did not object to Rebecca being there.
“Keep the doors locked, preserve everything, and do not access any account through links sent by Scott.”
