Chapter 10: What Thomas Said
We met Thomas Marsh at Patricia's office on a Tuesday.
He was not what I had expected from the profile photograph.
The easy smile was g*ne.
He looked like a man who had not slept well in several weeks.
His lawyer sat beside him and said very little.
My mother sat across the table from him.
Rachel was beside her.
I was beside Rachel.
Patricia sat at the head of the table.
Thomas looked at my mother for a moment before he spoke.
"I need to say something before anything else," he said.
"I'm not doing this to reduce my charges.
My lawyer told me it won't.
I'm doing it because my father asked me to.
He said if I was going to face what I did, I should start by telling the truth to the people who deserved to hear it."
My mother said nothing.
She waited.
Thomas folded his hands on the table.
"I found the accounts when I was twenty-one," he said.
"I was doing an internship at the company that summer.
I came across a discrepancy in a routine file and I followed it.
I found everything." He paused.
"I went to your husband.
To Robert.
I told him what I'd found and I told him I was going to tell my father."
"What did he say?" my mother asked.
"He told me my father had agreed to the arrangement.
That it was a private restructuring between partners that hadn't been formally documented yet.
He was very calm.
Very convincing." Thomas looked at the table.
"I was twenty-one.
He was a man I had known my whole life.
I believed him."
"For how long?" Rachel said.
"Two years.
Maybe three.
By then I understood it wasn't what he'd said it was.
But by then I had also said nothing for two years.
And he reminded me of that." Thomas's jaw tightened.
"He said if I came forward, I'd be implicated for having known and stayed silent.
He had documentation suggesting I had been aware from the beginning.
I don't know if it would have held up — but I was twenty-three and I was scared."
"So you stayed quiet," I said.
"Yes."
"And when he died?"
Thomas was silent for a moment.
"When he died, I told myself I would stop.
That I would let it close.
But the accounts were still there.
And I — " He stopped.
"There's no version of this that makes me look like anything other than what I am.
I took the money.
I knew it was wrong.
I did it anyway."
The room was quiet.
Then my mother said: "What was it you thought I deserved to hear?"
Thomas looked at her.
"Your husband came to my father two months before your cancer went into remission," he said.
"He told my father that you had discovered the accounts and that you were planning to go to the authorities.
He asked my father to provide a statement — a false one — confirming that you had been involved in the transfers.
That you had known and approved them."
My mother's hands were very still on the table.
"My father refused," Thomas said.
"He told your husband he wouldn't do it.
They argued.
My father told him that if he tried to frame you, he would go to the police himself regardless of what it cost him." He paused.
"I was outside the office.
I heard the whole thing."
Rachel looked at me.
"Your father protected her," I said slowly.
"He didn't know about the disappearance," Thomas said.
"He didn't know what Robert had arranged.
But when your husband asked him to help destroy your mother — he said no.
I thought she should know that."
My mother looked at the table for a long moment.
When she looked up, her eyes were wet.
"Thank you," she said.
Her voice was steady.
"Please tell your father — thank you."
Thomas nodded once.
His lawyer began gathering papers.
As Thomas stood to leave, he paused.
"Ms.
Venn," he said.
He used her assumed name without irony.
"I'm sorry.
For all of it.
For the part that was mine and for the part I allowed to continue." He looked at me, then at Rachel.
"I'm sorry to all of you."
He left.
Patricia closed her folder.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then Rachel said: "Gerald Marsh refused to help him destroy you.
And Thomas let his father's company be robbed for twenty years." She shook her head.
"Some families."
May you like
My mother let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
It was the first time I had heard that sound from her in twelve years.
