Chapter 5: What January Bought
We arranged to meet on Thursday.
Renee would drive down.
Carol offered her kitchen table and I didn't argue.
The three days between that phone call and Thursday were the quietest of my life.
Adam came to Carol's house on Monday evening.
I heard his truck in the driveway and watched from the upstairs window as he knocked.
Carol answered.
I couldn't hear the words but I could read the posture — his leaning forward, hers square in the doorframe, not moving back.
He left after four minutes.
Carol came upstairs.
"He wants to talk.
He says he can explain everything."
"What did you tell him?"
"That you'd call when you were ready." She sat on the edge of the bed.
"He also said to tell you that Renee is unstable and that anything she says to you is designed to hurt him."
"He knows I've spoken to her."
"He knows." Carol looked at her hands.
"He didn't seem surprised.
He seemed like he'd been expecting it."
That bothered me more than the message on his mother's phone.
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Renee arrived Thursday at noon.
She was younger than I'd imagined — early thirties, dark circles under her eyes, a canvas bag over one shoulder that she set on the table before she sat down.
She looked at my daughter in the bouncer by the window and something crossed her face that I couldn't name.
"She's beautiful," she said.
"Tell me about January," I said.
Renee nodded.
She reached into the canvas bag and pulled out a manila folder.
She set it on the table but kept her hand on top of it.
"Adam and I were together for almost two years," she said.
"Before you.
It ended badly — he ended it, and I moved on.
Or I thought I had." She paused.
"Last spring we ran into each other.
It was once.
I'm not proud of it.
It was a mistake and I ended it immediately."
"While I was pregnant."
"Yes." She didn't look away.
"I ended it in May.
The messages you saw were me trying to make him understand it was finished.
He didn't want to let it go cleanly."
"The message said the baby was a mistake."
"My baby is not his," she said again, firmly.
"I had a paternity test done.
I can show you the results." She opened the folder and slid a document across the table.
I looked at it.
A lab report.
A date in April.
A result that confirmed what she'd said.
"Then what is he paying you for?" Carol asked from across the table.
Renee's hand moved to a second document in the folder.
"In January," she said, "I found out something about Adam by accident.
I wasn't looking for it.
I was at his office dropping off something he'd left at my place — this was before I ended things — and I saw paperwork on his desk." She slid the second document across.
"I photographed it.
I didn't know why at the time.
Something just felt wrong."
I looked at the photograph.
It was a financial document.
A transfer record.
The account name at the top was not Adam's.
It was the farm's.
"He's been moving money out of his father's business accounts," Renee said.
"Small amounts.
Irregular intervals.
Since at least two years ago." She tapped the document.
"I'm not an accountant.
But I know what a transfer record looks like.
And I know that account doesn't belong to him."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Does his father know?" Carol asked.
"I don't think so," Renee said.
"Adam paid me to stay quiet.
I took the money because I was scared of what he'd do if I didn't." She looked at me directly.
"But then I saw what he did to your daughter at that reunion.
And I thought — she deserves to know what she's married to."
I looked at the transfer record again.
The amounts were not small.
My phone buzzed on the table.
Adam's name on the screen.
I turned it face-down.
"How much documentation do you have?" I asked Renee.
May you like
She reached back into the canvas bag.
"Enough," she said.
