I called Dana the next morning from the hospital parking garage, the only place I could get privacy. The concrete echoed. Cars slid in and out of the levels above me.
"Dana, I just got a call from First Volunteer Bank about a three-hundred-and-ten-thousand-dollar SBA loan in my name. Tell me this is some kind of mistake."
There was a pause. A long one. Then Dana laughed — a short, light laugh, like I'd told her a funny story at a dinner party. "Oh my God, Megan, you scared me. No, no, there's no loan. That must be a scam call. You get those all the time with the business number posted online. Did you give them any information?"
"Dana. The account is under my Social. Co-signed by you."
Another pause. "That's impossible. I would never sign you up for anything. You know I'd never do that." Her voice had gone warm and syrupy, the voice she used on vendors when she wanted a discount. "Sweetie, you're exhausted. You haven't slept in weeks. You're not thinking straight. Let me call the bank and sort this out for you."
"Don't you dare call that bank," I said. "I'll handle it myself."
"Megan." Her tone shifted, just slightly. Cooler. "I'm your partner. I'm the one keeping this business alive while you're up there playing nurse. A little trust would be nice."
Playing nurse. My nine-year-old daughter had leukemia, and my sister-in-law said I was playing nurse. I hung up before I said something I'd regret, and I sat in that freezing parking garage and did something I should have done months ago: I pulled every financial record I could access online.
The operating account: $412.08. The savings account we'd kept for slow months: $87.14. The line of credit we'd opened together five years ago with a zero balance: maxed out at $75,000. Every credit card in the company's name: maxed.
Then I opened our payroll account, and my hands went numb. The last payroll tax deposit — the money we're supposed to send to the IRS every month for our employees' Social Security and Medicare — hadn't been made in nine months. Nine months of collecting it from paychecks and keeping it. That wasn't a mistake. That was a federal crime with my name on it as co-owner.
I called Bethany Cole, my best friend since college, my maid of honor, the only person I trusted completely. "Beth," I said, "I need you to do something for me. Go to the county recorder's office in Murfreesboro. Pull every document filed under my name and the business's name in the last two years. Don't tell anyone why."
"On my way," she said, without asking a single question.
I sat in my car and watched the sun come up over the garage levels, and I thought about all the times Dana had brought casseroles to the hospital. All the times she'd sat beside Lily's bed and stroked her hair and told her what a brave girl she was. All the times she'd hugged me in the hallway and whispered, "I've got the business, honey. You just be her mama."
She'd had the business, all right. She'd had all of it.
