He did not touch his coffee. He reached out and tapped the screen of my phone, turning off the display so the red light stopped reflecting in his eyes.
“Is there more?” he asked.
“I need to look at Jason’s personal accounts,” I said. “He keeps a locked steel box in our kitchen desk.”
Terrence stood up and pulled his damp coat tighter around his shoulders.
“We need to go outside,” he said. “The air in here is too thick.”
The rain had turned to a steady drizzle by nine o’clock. The hotel parking lot was half empty, the wet asphalt reflecting the yellow security lights like oil on water.
We stopped between our two cars, the cold mist clinging to my eyelashes. Terrence leaned against the driver’s side door of his sedan, his hands buried deep in his pockets.
“Sydney has been distant since July,” Terrence said, his voice barely louder than the idling engine of a nearby delivery truck. “She stays up late in the nursery, staring at the wall.”
“She told me she was just tired,” I said.
“She requested a forty-thousand-dollar glass pavilion upgrade for the country club reception last Tuesday,” he said. “She told me our parents were paying for it as a gift.”
I looked down at the silver ring on my left thumb and rotated it twice. My father’s firm could not afford a forty-thousand-dollar gift, let alone the full wedding reception.
“Did she sign anything for the venue?” I asked.
“She said William handled the paperwork,” Terrence said. “But she was very specific about the glass enclosure. She said she wanted the baby to see the autumn leaves during the dinner.”
He stopped, his eyes fixing on a spot on the wet pavement.
“She let me hear the heartbeat,” he said.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with the weight of what we both suspected but could not yet prove. He did not ask about my twelve million dollars from the Mercer sale, and I did not volunteer it. He still believed I was just a basic database manager living on a modest salary.
“I will help you gather the records,” Terrence said. “But we must do it quietly.”
“How much do you think my father actually owes?” I asked.
Terrence opened his car door, the interior light casting a pale glow over his tired face.
“More than his business is worth,” he said.
I drove back to my apartment with the heater on high, but the chill did not leave my fingers.
By ten-thirty, the apartment was completely silent. Jason was in Springfield for a real-estate conference, or so his calendar claimed.
I sat at my small writing desk in the living room and opened my laptop. My personal email archives went back eight years, organized in neat, searchable folders.
I typed Jason’s full name into the search bar, alongside the term financial statement.
Three months ago, before we signed the initial venue contract, Jason had sent me a PDF of his credit history. I opened the file and scrolled through the pages, my eyes tracking the numbers.
The report showed a credit score of seven hundred and eighty. There were no outstanding collections, no late payments on his car loan, and a modest balance on his retail cards.
I zoomed in on the date of the report. It was printed on the letterhead of a local credit union in Oakbrook.
I opened a separate browser tab and navigated to the credit union’s online portal. I had a small savings account there that my grandmother had opened for me when I was twelve.
I looked at the font on the PDF again. The spacing between the numbers in the credit score column was slightly wider than the standard template.
I dialed the automated verification number listed on the back of my savings card.
“To verify a member document, press four,” the recorded voice said.
I entered the document reference number from Jason’s PDF. The system paused for three seconds, a low tone buzzing in my ear.
“The number you entered does not match our records,” the machine said.
I hung up and closed the laptop.
The kitchen was cold, the scent of an expensive lavender candle Jason had bought me still lingering in the air.
I walked over to the desk by the pantry. It was a heavy oak piece that had belonged to my mother’s family, with deep drawers that smelled of old wax.
