Chapter 4: Real Trouble
I was in my car before I fully decided to go.
Dana lived twenty minutes away, a small house on a quiet street she'd rented for the last four years.
I had been there a hundred times.
I knew which step on her porch creaked, which key on her ring was the spare, how she kept her spare house key under the ceramic frog by the door because she locked herself out twice in one winter and never quite recovered from the embarrassment.
I drove without music.
I kept both hands on the wheel.
My phone rang twice.
Liam.
I let it ring.
Dana's car was in the driveway.
I sat outside for a moment, looking at her front window.
The curtain moved slightly, then went still.
She'd seen me.
I got out and walked to the door and knocked.
Nothing.
"Dana." I kept my voice level.
"I can see your car.
Open the door."
Thirty seconds.
Then the lock turned.
She looked like she hadn't slept.
Her hair was pulled back unevenly, and she was wearing an old sweatshirt I recognized from college — faded blue, one fraying cuff.
Her eyes went straight to mine and then immediately away.
"I was going to tell you," she said.
"Let me in."
She stepped back.
I walked into her living room and stopped.
There were papers on the coffee table.
A lot of them.
Printed emails, what looked like bank statements, a yellow legal pad covered in her handwriting.
She hadn't been hiding this.
She'd been working on it.
"Sit down," I said.
"Ellen—"
"Please sit down, Dana."
She sat.
I sat across from her.
I looked at the papers and then at my sister, and I waited.
She pulled her sleeves down over her hands.
"About eighteen months ago, I got involved with someone.
A man I met through a friend of a friend.
He seemed — he had a good job, he was charming, he talked about the future like it was something real." She stopped.
"He wasn't what he said he was."
"What was he?"
"He was running something.
I didn't know at first.
He kept it very separate from everything we talked about.
But after a few months he started asking me to help him.
Small things at first.
Hold onto some money for a few days.
Transfer it to an account he'd give me.
He said it was for a business deal, that the banks were slow, that it was just temporary."
My stomach was already dropping.
"Dana."
"I know." Her voice was very quiet.
"I know what it sounds like."
"How much did you move for him?"
She named a figure.
It was not small.
"And then?" I said.
"And then he disappeared.
And two months later, I got a letter." She reached into the papers and pulled out a single page.
She held it out to me without looking at it.
I took it.
It was from a law firm.
It used words like liability and knowing participation and potential criminal exposure.
I read it twice.
"They think you were part of it," I said.
"They're saying I could be." She finally looked at me.
"Ellen, I panicked.
I took the money from the account because I needed a lawyer, a real one, not a public defender.
I was so scared.
I didn't know what else to do.
I couldn't come to you because—" Her voice broke.
"Because it was Mom's money, and I'd already done something terrible, and I couldn't stand to see your face when you found out."
I set the letter down on the coffee table.
"So you told Liam instead."
"He came over one night when you were away for work.
He could tell something was wrong.
He pushed until I told him." She pressed her hands together.
"He's been helping me find a lawyer.
He's been coming with me to meetings.
He made me promise I would tell you, but I kept—" She stopped.
"I kept asking for more time."
The room was very quiet.
I looked at my sister.
At the sweatshirt from college, at the papers spread across the table, at the yellow legal pad covered in her handwriting — pages and pages of it, like she'd been trying to write her way out of this alone for months.
"What's the lawyer saying?" I asked.
"That it's not hopeless.
That because I cooperated immediately and have no prior record, there's a real argument I was a victim too." She hesitated.
"But it's expensive.
And it's not over."
"How much more do you need?"
She shook her head.
"I'm not asking you for money, Ellen."
"I didn't ask what you were asking.
I asked how much more you need."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Her eyes filled.
"I don't know yet," she said.
"The lawyer thinks another few months, maybe more."
I nodded slowly.
I looked at the letter again.
Then I looked at the window, at the ordinary street outside, at a neighbor walking a dog past Dana's fence without any idea that inside this house, my sister had been drowning for eighteen months.
"Why didn't you trust me?" I said.
Not angry.
Just the question, plain and honest.
"Because I was so ashamed." Her voice was barely a sound.
"And because you always do everything right, Ellen.
You always have.
And I couldn't stand to be the sister who ruined everything."
Something in my chest pulled tight.
Before I could answer, her phone buzzed on the table between us.
She glanced at it.
And her face changed.
"What?" I said.
She turned the phone so I could see the screen.
It was a text from a number with no name saved.
May you like
Four words.
*I know she's there.*
