The IRS notice arrived at the hospital three days later. Bethany had been forwarding my mail, and she'd opened this one because the envelope had "FINAL NOTICE" stamped across it in red.
Megan Torres and Southern Bloom Events owed $96,400 in unpaid payroll taxes, penalties, and interest. If payment wasn't received within thirty days, the IRS would file a federal tax lien against me personally and against the business. A lien. On everything I owned. While my daughter was in a hospital bed, the federal government was coming for me because my sister-in-law had stolen the tax money out of my employees' paychecks.
I called the IRS from the family lounge at 7 a.m., while Lily was getting her morning blood draw. The agent was polite and absolutely immovable. "The liability attaches to both owners, ma'am. You're listed as a fifty-percent owner on the EIN."
"I'm not disputing that I'm an owner," I said. "I'm telling you I didn't know. I was at a children's hospital."
"Intent is a matter for the courts, ma'am. The debt is the debt."
I hung up and put my head in my hands. Then my phone buzzed. Bethany. She'd been to the recorder's office.
"Megan, you need to sit down."
"I'm sitting."
"There's a quitclaim deed filed fourteen months ago. You signed — supposedly signed — your interest in the commercial building over to Dana. Sole ownership transferred to Dana Whitfield."
The commercial building. The warehouse on Broad Street that we'd bought together six years ago, where we stored all our event equipment, where our office was. Worth close to half a million dollars. "Beth, I never signed a quitclaim deed."
"I know you didn't. But here's the worse part. Six months after that deed, there's a second mortgage on the building. Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Lender's a private finance company out of Nashville. Signed by Dana as the owner."
My heart was hammering so loud I could hear it in my ears. "So she stole the building, then borrowed against it."
"It gets worse," Bethany said. "I pulled the notary log. The quitclaim deed was notarized by a woman named Linda Voss. Megan — I looked her up. Linda Voss's notary commission was suspended two years ago for fraud."
I walked back to Lily's room and stood in the doorway, watching her sleep, the chemo bag dripping slowly into her arm. She looked so small. So impossibly small. And I thought about the building we'd bought together, the day we'd signed the papers, Dana crying happy tears in the parking lot, saying we'd be partners forever.
That night I did something that felt like the first sane thing I'd done in weeks. I put a credit freeze on all three bureaus. Equifax, Experian, TransUnion. Locked down tight. If Dana tried to open one more thing in my name, she'd hit a wall.
Then I sat in the dark and made a list on a hospital napkin. The SBA loan: $310,000. The second mortgage: $220,000. The payroll taxes: $96,400. The drained accounts and maxed credit: roughly $200,000. I added it up with the calculator on my phone.
Seven hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars. My sister-in-law had taken nearly three-quarters of a million dollars from me while I was holding my daughter's hand through chemo.
And somewhere in Murfreesboro, Dana Whitfield was sleeping just fine.
