Chương 3
“Work?”
I asked.
“Yes.”
The answer was too fast.
I nodded.
“Of course.”
He picked up his keys.
“Your parents are expecting us on the second.”
“I know.”
“Try not to make this difficult.”
The sentence stayed with me after he left.
Not because it hurt.
Because it revealed something.
Julien did not think I was planning anything.
He thought I was going to be emotional.
Unreasonable.
Difficult.
He had created a version of me in his head, and he was speaking to that version instead of the person standing in front of him.
Later that afternoon, I drove to my parents’ house alone.
I told Julien I needed to help my father with something.
That was true.
I just did not tell him what.
The drive took forty minutes.
It was the same road I had traveled hundreds of times growing up.
The small grocery store where my father still bought apples every Saturday.
The old gas station where my mother refused to stop because she said the coffee tasted like “warm disappointment.”
The apartment building where my best friend from high school lived before she moved away.
Nothing had changed.
And somehow everything had.
My parents’ house looked exactly the same when I pulled into the driveway.
The same blue door.
The same flower pots my mother insisted on keeping alive even though she forgot to water them.
The same wooden steps my father repaired every spring.
Except there was one difference.
A black SUV was parked beside my father’s truck.
I knew the vehicle.
But I did not expect to see it there.
My hand stayed on the door handle for several seconds.
Then I walked inside.
My mother appeared from the kitchen wearing her old green sweater.
She always wore that sweater when she cooked because she claimed it was “already ruined enough to survive another meal.”
“You are early,” she said.
She hugged me before asking anything else.
That was my mother.
She gave comfort first and questions later.
My father was sitting at the dining table with another man.
The man stood when I entered.
He was older than Julien, probably in his late fifties.
Gray hair.
Simple clothes.
A careful expression.
The kind of face that looked like it had spent years watching people lie.
“Juliette,” my father said.
“This is Daniel.”
I nodded.
I already knew who he was.
Not personally.
But professionally.
Daniel Mercer had been the chief financial officer of a company I audited two years earlier.
He was also the reason I had learned that financial problems rarely appeared overnight.
They were usually small decisions that nobody wanted to discuss until they became impossible to hide.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
Daniel gave a small nod.
“Your father explained the situation.”
I looked at my father.
He looked uncomfortable.
Not because he had done something wrong.
Because he hated seeing me in pain.
“I did not want to interfere,” he said.
“I know.”
“But when you asked me to find someone who could look at the records without personal feelings involved…”
He stopped.
I understood.
My father had always been the kind of man who fixed things with his hands.
Broken chairs.
Leaking pipes.
Loose door hinges.
He was less comfortable fixing things he could not touch.
“Daniel agreed to review what you found,” I said.
“Yes.”
He tapped a folder on the table.
“But before I say anything, I need you to understand something.”
His voice was calm.
“I am not here to confirm what you want to believe.”
I appreciated that.
More than he probably realized.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean financial evidence can tell you what happened.”
He opened the folder.
“It cannot always tell you why.”
The room became quiet.
My mother placed a plate of cookies on the table and sat down beside me.
Nobody touched them.
“The transfers are concerning,” Daniel continued.
“But the bigger issue is the structure.”
He pointed to several pages.
“Northstar Consulting was created four months ago.”
I nodded.
“By Léo.”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at me.
“Are you sure Julien has no ownership?”
I hesitated.
That question bothered me.
Not because I knew the answer.
Because I did not.
“I thought so.”
Daniel turned a page.
“Thought?”
I looked down.
The word sounded different when someone else said it.
“I checked the public registration.”
“That only shows official ownership.”
He slid another document across the table.
“This was not publicly available.”
My stomach tightened.
“What is it?”
“A payment agreement.”
I picked it up.
The signature at the bottom was familiar.
Too familiar.
Julien’s handwriting.
The room seemed to shrink around me.
“He signed this three months after Northstar was created,” Daniel said.
My fingers went cold.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel looked at my father, then back at me.
“It means your husband may not be hiding money from you.”
He paused.
“It means he may be hiding responsibility.”
For a few seconds, nobody moved.
The only sound in the room was the ticking clock above my mother’s old wooden cabinet.
It had been there since I was a child.
I used to hate that clock because it was too loud when I was trying to sleep during family visits.
Now, sitting there with a document showing my husband’s signature, I found myself grateful for something ordinary making noise.
It gave me something to focus on besides the feeling that my marriage had shifted under my feet.
“What kind of responsibility?” my father asked.
His voice was controlled, but I knew him well enough to hear the anger underneath.
Daniel folded his hands.
“That is what we need to determine.”
I looked back at the agreement.
Julien’s signature sat at the bottom of the page like a stranger’s name.
“What did he sign?”
Daniel hesitated.
Not because he did not know.
Because he was choosing the right words.
“That depends on whether he understood what he was agreeing to.”
I looked at him.
May you like
“Explain.”
“Northstar was not created as a normal consulting company.”
