Chapter 8: Greta's Office, Nine O'Clock
Greta Marsh's office was on the fourth floor of a building that smelled like carpet cleaner and old coffee.
The furniture was practical, the lighting was flat, and the shelves behind her desk were stacked with binders in a way that suggested she had never once lost a document in her life.
She shook Vanessa's hand first, then Kayla's, then looked at the envelope Kayla set on her desk.
"Original statements?" she asked.
"Yes," Kayla said.
Greta sat down, opened the envelope, and read without speaking.
Her face did not change.
That was the thing about Greta — she had heard everything, and nothing surprised her, and that quality was worth more than any amount of visible outrage.
"The Ohio lease," she said, without looking up.
Kayla produced it.
Greta read it.
Set it beside the statements.
"The lab name for the paternity test."
I handed her the photograph I'd taken of the document the night before.
She looked at it, wrote something on her notepad.
"ClearPath," she said.
"They're private but licensed.
Subpoena will be straightforward." She looked up.
"I'm going to need a formal statement from each of you.
What you were told, when you were told it, what you found and how.
I'll have my associate take those separately this morning so there's no question of coordination."
"What happens after that?" Vanessa asked.
"I file an emergency motion to freeze the trust assets pending a full financial disclosure.
Given the pattern of transfers and the existence of a separate household, I expect the court to grant it." Greta folded her hands on the desk.
"The Ohio situation is more complex.
If there is a third party in Ohio — a woman named Patricia — she may have legal standing of her own depending on the nature of that relationship and whether any assets were transferred to her or in her name."
"Should someone contact her?" I asked.
"Not yet.
Let me make some inquiries first.
If she's a victim of the same pattern, she deserves to know.
But the timing matters."
Vanessa shifted in her chair.
"What about the baby?"
Greta looked at her directly.
"If the biological father is someone other than Ryan, Ryan has no legal claim to the child.
However, if Ryan has been representing himself as the father and making promises related to financial support, those representations may be relevant in a separate proceeding." She paused.
"Do you know how to reach the biological father?"
"Yes," Vanessa said quietly.
"I'd recommend you do that before Ryan does."
Vanessa nodded.
Greta's associate knocked and came in — a young woman named Priya who carried a legal pad and had the focused expression of someone who wrote very fast and forgot nothing.
"I'll take the statements in the conference room," Priya said.
"One at a time."
Kayla went first.
I waited with Vanessa in the hall outside Greta's office.
The building was busy by then, other clients arriving, phones ringing, the ordinary machinery of other people's crises running alongside ours.
"Are you all right?" I asked Vanessa.
She thought about it honestly.
"I don't know yet.
I think I will be."
"The dress," I said.
"Keep it if you want.
I don't—"
"No." She shook her head.
"It's yours.
It was always yours.
I'll bring it by your sister's this week, cleaned." She paused.
"I'm sorry I wore it.
I'm sorry for a lot of things."
"You didn't know the whole picture," I said.
"That's what he counted on."
"Still." She looked at her hands.
The engagement ring was gone.
I noticed it without saying anything.
"Your mother sounds like she was a remarkable woman."
"She was."
"She raised someone who kept their head when most people would have fallen apart." She glanced at me sideways.
"That's not nothing."
Priya appeared in the doorway.
"Vanessa?
Ready for you."
Vanessa stood.
She smoothed the front of her coat — a different one from the night before, her own, nothing borrowed.
She walked in.
I sat down in the hall chair and looked out the window at the street four floors below.
People moving.
Buses.
A woman walking a dog that kept stopping to investigate the base of every lamppost.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Ryan.
*I know you were all together last night.
Whatever you think you have, you should know I have documentation of my own.
This is going to get ugly.
I'm giving you one chance to settle quietly.*
I read it twice.
Then I forwarded it to Greta.
She replied in forty seconds.
*Perfect.
That's an attempt to influence witnesses.
I'll add it to the file.
Don't respond.*
I put my phone away.
Below, the woman with the dog had given up on the lamppost and was moving again, the dog trotting alongside her, both of them going somewhere with a sense of purpose I found, in that moment, quietly encouraging.
Priya appeared again.
"Your turn."
I went in and told Priya everything.
All of it, from the beginning.
The desk.
The documents.
The dress.
The party.
The phone on the entry table.
The knock at the door.
It took forty minutes.
When I finished, Priya looked up from her notepad.
"One question," she said.
"The night you found the documents on his desk — did he know you'd seen them?"
"No," I said.
"He came home late.
I was already in the guest room.
I'd taken photos on my phone and put everything back exactly where it was."
"And the paternity test — you took it from the desk?"
"I took a copy.
The original was still there when I left the house."
Priya wrote something.
"Good.
That matters."
"Why?"
"Because it means you didn't remove evidence.
You documented it.
There's a difference." She clicked her pen.
"He's going to claim you went through his private papers."
"I did."
"In the marital home.
Which you had every legal right to be in at the time." She looked up.
"He's going to have a hard time making that argument stick."
I nodded.
"We're going to be fine," Priya said.
Not warmly, exactly.
But with the particular confidence of someone who has read a great many files and knows which direction this one is going.
I walked back out to the hall.
Greta was standing there, phone in hand, expression unchanged but eyes alert.
"The motion is filed," she said.
"The assets are frozen as of eleven-fourteen this morning."
I looked at her.
"That fast?"
"The documentation was strong.
The judge agreed it was urgent." She put her phone in her pocket.
"Ryan's lawyer called while you were in with Priya.
He wants to schedule a settlement conference."
"Already?"
"When the assets freeze, people move quickly." A small pause.
"He knows what we have.
Or he's guessing correctly.
Either way, he wants to talk."
"What do you recommend?"
"I recommend we let him wait until Thursday," Greta said.
May you like
"And I recommend you go home, eat something, and sleep."
For the first time in weeks, that sounded like something I could actually do.
