Chapter 5: Eleven Years
I don't know how long I sat there looking at that page.
At some point a waiter appeared and Richard waved him away.
At some point Diane poured water into my glass and pushed it toward me.
I didn't drink it.
"She used my mother's maiden name," I said finally.
"Yes," Paul said.
"I told her that.
I told her that myself." I set the paper down.
"She asked me once what the most common security question was and I told her — my mother's maiden name, Hartley.
I even spelled it for her." I looked at Richard.
"Do you remember that?
We were all at the barbecue.
You were standing right there."
Richard nodded slowly.
His face had the look of a man watching something he'd been dreading for a long time finally arrive.
"She planned this," I said.
It wasn't a question.
"We think the friendship was genuine at first," Paul said.
"But at some point — we believe around five years ago — she began collecting information.
Systematically."
"Collecting information." The words felt strange in my mouth.
"From me.
About me."
"Your date of birth, your mother's maiden name, your previous address, your employment history.
All things you would have mentioned naturally over eleven years of friendship." Paul's voice was measured, careful.
"None of it would have felt like a question.
It would have felt like conversation."
I thought about eleven years of conversation.
Dinners.
Phone calls.
The afternoon she'd helped me sort through my mother's belongings after the funeral, both of us sitting on the floor of my mother's bedroom, going through boxes.
She'd held a framed photo of my parents and said, *your mother had such a beautiful face.*
My throat tightened.
"Where is she now?" I said.
"Still in the neighborhood, as far as we know," Richard said.
"Does she know you've found out?"
"No," Paul said.
"We've been careful.
We didn't want her to run before we had everything in order."
I looked at the transaction record again.
The phone number.
The broker's name.
"What does 'everything in order' mean?"
"It means we need you," Paul said.
"The fraud was committed in your name.
You are the injured party.
Without your formal statement and cooperation, the case is significantly weaker."
"You want me to go to the police."
"We want you to have the choice," Diane said.
"That's why tonight was supposed to happen without you.
Richard wanted to hear what Paul had before he brought it to you.
He wanted to walk in the door tonight and tell you it was handled."
I looked at my husband.
"Is that true?"
Richard met my eyes.
"I didn't want to put this on you until I knew there was a path forward.
You'd just had a hard year.
Your mother, and then the job change, and I—" He stopped.
"I didn't want to add this."
"So you lied about being at work."
"Yes."
"And you texted me to cancel so I wouldn't walk in here."
"Yes."
"And when I walked in anyway—"
"I nearly had a heart attack," he said quietly.
Something in his voice — not the words, but the way they came out, stripped of everything except the truth of them — made my eyes sting.
I looked away.
Diane was watching me carefully.
"What do you want to do?" she said.
I picked up the transaction record.
Looked at Carol's phone number one more time.
Thought about the barbecue.
The book club.
The floor of my mother's bedroom.
"I want to talk to her first," I said.
Richard's head came up sharply.
"Martha—"
"Before the police.
May you like
Before anything official." I set the paper down.
"I want to look her in the eye."
