While Daniel built the legal case, Frank built the financial one. He followed the money from Tidewater Ink through a maze of accounts, and what he found was staggering: Dana, Marcus, and Richard had not just stolen royalties. They had also taken out a business loan of $300,000, using my book's sales projections as collateral, and they had used my name — again, forged — on the loan application. The bank, a small community bank in Portland, had approved the loan based on the book's success, never suspecting that the "author" on the application was not the person who wrote it. When the loan came due and the royalties were frozen by the court injunction, the payments stopped, and the bank started asking questions. Frank gave the bank's fraud investigator everything he had, and the investigator, a sharp woman named Karen Doyle, opened her own case. Now Dana and Richard were facing not just a civil lawsuit, but a bank fraud investigation, too.
Meanwhile, Richard made a move that showed just how scared he was. He tried to sell their house in Florida — quickly, quietly, below market value — and transfer the money to an account in the Cayman Islands. Frank found out about it through a real estate contact, and Daniel immediately asked the court to freeze all of Dana and Richard's assets, arguing that they were trying to hide money that might belong to me and the other victims. The judge agreed. Within forty-eight hours, their bank accounts were frozen, their house could not be sold, and their credit cards stopped working. Richard, who had lived his whole life with money smoothing every problem, suddenly could not pay for dinner at a restaurant. I did not celebrate. I just felt tired, and a little sad, for the people they could have been if they had chosen honesty.
But Dana still had one weapon left: her fans. She went back online, posting daily videos, crying, claiming she was the victim of a conspiracy by "jealous writers" and "greedy lawyers." Her most loyal fans believed her. They raised money for her legal defense — over $60,000 in a crowdfunding campaign — and they flooded my author page, Daniel's office page, and even Sophie's diner page with hateful messages. One message scared me more than the rest: an anonymous comment on my page that said, "We know where you live, Nora. Drop the case or else." I reported it to the police, and Frank increased his drive-bys to three times a night. Claire stayed with me for a week, sleeping in Tom's old armchair in the living room, and Sophie came over every evening to cook dinner. We were three women, holding each other up, in a house that had become both a fortress and a home.
Then, in the middle of all that noise, something wonderful happened. A real publisher — a mid-sized, respected publishing house in New York called Harbor Press — contacted Daniel. They had read about my case, they had read my original manuscript, and they wanted to publish *The Lighthouse Keeper's Widow*, under my name, with my story, the way I had always dreamed. They offered me a real contract, a real advance, and a real publication date. I cried when Daniel told me. Not because of the money, though the advance would pay off my mortgage. I cried because someone in the publishing world finally saw my book and said, "This is yours, and it deserves to be read." I signed the contract with a pen Tom had given me years ago, and for the first time since this nightmare began, I felt like a writer again — not a victim, not a case number, but a writer.
