Chapter 5: What the Transfers Revealed
The lawyer's name was Mr.
Holt.
He had handled Adrian's family affairs for nine years.
He arrived within forty minutes, briefcase in hand, and said very little when he came through the door.
Adrian met him in the hallway.
They spoke quietly for two minutes.
Then they went into the sitting room together.
Vanessa was already seated when they entered.
She had changed her blouse.
Her hair was smooth.
She looked composed.
She had decided on the soft play.
"Adrian," she said, her voice gentle.
"Before Mr.
Holt says anything, I want to say something.
I know today was frightening.
I know what it looked like.
But I have been struggling.
Truly struggling.
And I should have told you sooner how hard things have been with Lily.
She's a grieving child and I've been trying so hard to reach her and I think I've been handling it badly and I'm sorry."
Her eyes filled.
Precisely on time.
Adrian sat down across from her.
Mr.
Holt took the chair to the side and opened his briefcase without comment.
"Vanessa," Adrian said.
"I'm going to ask you some questions.
I need you to answer them honestly."
She nodded.
Dabbed at her eye with one finger.
"The household account," he said.
"The one I set up when we married.
The one for running the house."
"Yes."
"What is the current balance?"
A small hesitation.
"I'd have to check.
I don't keep the exact figure in my head."
"It should be somewhere between forty and fifty thousand," Adrian said.
"Based on what I deposit each quarter."
Vanessa said nothing.
Mr.
Holt placed a printed document on the coffee table between them.
He turned it so it faced Vanessa.
"The current balance," Mr.
Holt said, "is four thousand, two hundred and eleven dollars."
Vanessa looked at the document.
She did not pick it up.
"There have been expenses," she said.
"The house renovation.
The garden.
Lily's tutoring."
"The renovation was paid from a separate account," Adrian said.
"The garden contract I signed myself.
Lily's tutoring is billed directly to my office."
Vanessa's hands were very still in her lap.
"Mr.
Holt," Adrian said, "can you walk us through the withdrawals?"
Mr.
Holt turned to the second page of the document.
"Over the past twenty-two months, there have been forty-seven transfers from the household account to an external account.
The transfers range from eight hundred dollars to three thousand dollars each.
The total removed is approximately sixty-one thousand dollars."
The room was quiet.
"That external account," Adrian said, "is not in your name.
It's not in mine.
Mr.
Holt tracked it this afternoon.
Do you want to tell me whose name it's in?"
Vanessa looked up from the document.
The soft play was over.
He could see it leave her face.
"I want to speak to my own lawyer," she said.
"That's your right," Adrian said.
"But I want you to understand something first." He leaned forward.
"I have the notebook.
I have the video.
I have forty-seven transfers.
And I have a photograph of my daughter's face taken while I was out of the country." His voice stayed level.
"I am not angry right now, Vanessa.
I am past angry.
I am asking you one more time, as a courtesy, before this goes somewhere neither of us can take it back from.
Whose account is that money going to?"
Vanessa looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said a name.
Adrian sat back.
Mr.
Holt wrote the name down without looking up.
"Is he the one you called from the study?" Adrian asked.
Vanessa said nothing.
Which was its own answer.
Adrian stood.
"Mr.
Holt, please proceed with everything we discussed."
He walked toward the door.
"Adrian." Vanessa's voice came from behind him.
Different now.
No softness.
No tears.
"You think you know what this is.
You don't.
There are things about this family — about your father's estate, about what you actually inherited and what was kept from you — that you have never been told.
And if you push this, those things will come out.
All of them."
Adrian stopped.
He didn't turn around.
"Is that a threat?" he asked.
"It's a fact," Vanessa said.
"And the man whose name I just gave you?
He knows all of it.
Every document.
Every account.
Every decision your father made in the last two years of his life."
Adrian's hand rested on the door frame.
"Then I suppose," he said quietly, "I'll need to have a conversation with him."
He walked out.
May you like
Behind him, Vanessa stared at the document on the table.
For the first time since the garden, she looked like someone who had made a calculation and gotten it wrong.
