Chapter 3: What Robert Found Before Morning
Robert's associate arrived at the hospital forty minutes after I called.
Her name was Patricia Chen, and she came carrying a leather briefcase and a cup of coffee she set on my bedside table without asking.
"Robert said you hadn't eaten," she said.
"I haven't slept either."
"We'll deal with one problem at a time." She sat down, opened the briefcase, and placed a yellow legal pad on her knee.
"Tell me everything.
Start from the morning he left."
I told her.
All of it.
The suitcase, the keys, the nineteen unanswered calls, Mrs.
Alvarez's door, the ambulance, Vivian's pearls, the photographs, the wire transfer.
Patricia wrote without looking up.
When I finished, she set her pen down and looked at the printed page I had handed her.
"This signature," she said.
"You're certain it isn't Daniel's?"
"I've seen Daniel's signature on every document we've filed together for six years.
That's Vivian's handwriting.
I'd recognize it anywhere."
Patricia turned the page over once, then back.
"If this transfer came from a joint business account, and Vivian authorized it without Daniel's knowledge, that's a separate exposure entirely."
"Or Daniel knew and let her sign so his name stayed clean."
Patricia looked at me steadily.
"Either way, someone moved $340,000 to his girlfriend three days before your son was born."
The word landed in the room and neither of us spoke for a moment.
"I need the full account history," I said.
"Not just this transfer.
Everything going back two years."
"Robert's already requested it through our forensic contact.
We should have preliminary records by morning." She closed the briefcase.
"Is there anyone else who has access to those accounts besides Daniel and Vivian?"
"Their accountant.
A man named Gerald Foss.
He's been with the family for twenty years."
Patricia wrote the name.
"Does Foss like Daniel?"
I thought about the Christmas parties, the way Gerald always refilled Vivian's glass before anyone else's, the way he laughed at her jokes a half-second before anyone else did.
"He likes Vivian," I said.
"Then we'll assume he's not neutral." She stood and buttoned her jacket.
"Get some rest.
I'll be back at seven."
She was gone before I could thank her.
I looked at the wire transfer page again, then folded it carefully and placed it inside the front pocket of my hospital bag, beneath Noah's coming-home outfit — the white one with the small blue bears that I had washed and folded before he was born.
I pressed my hand flat against the fabric for a moment.
Then I turned off the bedside light and lay in the dark, listening to the hospital sounds in the corridor, and I did not sleep at all.
At 6:48 the next morning, Patricia walked back in.
She didn't sit down.
"We have the account records," she said.
"Grace." She paused.
"There isn't one transfer.
There are eleven."
My hand went still on the blanket.
May you like
"The earliest one was fourteen months ago," she said.
"Two weeks after you told Daniel you were pregnant."
