Chapter 5: The Message From Nowhere
I stared at the message for a long time.
*We need to talk.*
No name.
No context.
The number had a local area code but nothing else I recognized.
It was twelve forty-seven in the morning.
Whoever had sent it had not been concerned about the hour.
I typed back: *Who is this?*
The reply came in under a minute.
*My name is Karen.
I work with Daniel.
I think you deserve to know some things he hasn't told you.*
I sat very still on the edge of the bed.
*How did you get my number?*
*Daniel's phone.
He left it on his desk two weeks ago when he went to a meeting.
I wasn't snooping.
It lit up with your name and I saw it.
I wrote the number down because I thought — I don't know what I thought.
That I might need it.*
I read that twice.
*Why are you contacting me now?*
*Because he told everyone at the office today that you'd already agreed to move out.
He said it was mutual.
He said the house was being sold and you were both moving on.*
The room was very quiet.
Outside, a car passed on the street.
*He said that today.*
*At lunch.
To four people.
I was there.
I didn't say anything then because it wasn't my place.
But tonight when I called to — I don't know, check on him, I suppose, old habit — I heard your voice in the background and I heard what you said to him.
About the mortgage.
About the solicitor.*
*You were listening.*
*I didn't mean to be.
He didn't disconnect properly.
Laura, I'm not his girlfriend.
I want to be clear about that.
Whatever he told you about me, it isn't that.*
I stood up and walked to the window.
The street below was empty.
Daniel's car was gone.
*Then what are you?* I typed.
A longer pause this time.
*I'm the person who found the other account.*
I turned away from the window.
*What other account?*
*Daniel has a second savings account.
It's not joint.
It's not connected to anything you'd have access to.
He's been moving money into it for at least fourteen months.
I found out by accident — he asked me to help him with some paperwork last year and I saw a transfer reference that didn't match anything on the company records.
I looked into it because I thought it was an expense error.
It wasn't.*
My hand tightened around the phone.
*How much?*
*I don't know the full amount.
But the transfers I saw were regular.
Monthly.
Between two and four thousand each time.*
Fourteen months.
I ran the number in my head without wanting to.
Low estimate.
High estimate.
A range that sat in my chest like something cold.
*Why didn't you tell someone?*
*I told myself it wasn't my business.
That marriages are complicated.
That I didn't know the full picture.* A pause.
*I was a coward.
I'm sorry.*
I sat back down on the bed.
*Karen.
Do you have any of this in writing?
The transfer references?
Anything?*
*I kept a photograph of the paperwork.
I took it on my phone.
I told myself I was being paranoid and I never did anything with it.*
*Can you send it to me?*
Another pause.
Longer.
*Yes,* she wrote.
*Give me a few minutes.*
I waited.
The clock on my phone read 1:04.
The house was completely silent around me.
Seventeen years of furniture and photographs and shared habits, and all of it quiet, and somewhere in a hospital across town a newborn was sleeping in a bassinet with my home address on his paperwork.
My phone buzzed.
The image came through grainy but readable.
A transfer summary.
Daniel's name.
An account number I had never seen.
A column of figures going back over a year.
I zoomed in on the most recent entry.
The destination account had a name attached to it.
It wasn't Nicole.
May you like
It wasn't Karen.
It was a property management company I had never heard of.
