Chapter 7: What Gerald Found
Gerald arrived in forty-one minutes.
He was a small man in his seventies with a grey suit and reading glasses on a chain around his neck.
He shook Ryan's father's hand at the door — Ryan's parents had arrived ten minutes earlier and were sitting in the back of the room with the expression of people who had been told something large and were still processing the shape of it.
Gerald sat across from Daniel at one of the reception tables.
Patricia sat beside Gerald.
Ryan sat beside me.
Melissa sat alone at the end of the table.
She had changed into a bridesmaid's spare dress, a pale blue thing that didn't fit her properly at the shoulders.
She was holding a glass of water and not drinking it.
Gerald put on his reading glasses and opened the envelope.
He read for four minutes without speaking.
Daniel watched him.
The rest of us watched Daniel.
"Daniel," Gerald said finally, without looking up.
"The Hargrove Trust transfer on the fourteenth of March, two years ago.
Walk me through the authorization for that one."
"It was a routine reallocation.
The family approved a general restructuring at the January meeting."
"The January meeting authorized a restructuring of the operating accounts," Gerald said.
"The Hargrove Trust is a separate instrument.
It requires individual written consent from each named beneficiary." He looked up.
"Do you have that consent?"
"It was implied by the January authorization."
"It was not.
I drafted the January authorization.
Implication is not consent under the trust instrument." Gerald turned a page.
"The August transfer.
Same trust?"
"Different account."
"Also a named trust account.
Also requiring individual consent." Gerald set the papers down and looked at Daniel over his glasses.
"How many of these transfers had individual written consent from the named beneficiaries?"
Silence.
"Daniel."
"Some of them were—"
"How many."
Daniel looked at the table.
"None," he said.
Ryan's father made a sound from the back of the room.
Not a word.
Just a sound.
"The total across all accounts," Gerald said, "as Patricia has documented, is four hundred and thirty-two thousand dollars.
Does that figure match your own records?"
"Approximately."
"Yes or no."
"Yes."
Gerald took off his glasses.
He folded them and set them on the table.
"I've known your family for thirty years, Daniel.
I've known your father since before you were born." He paused.
"I'm going to ask you one question, and I want you to think carefully before you answer it.
Where is the money now?"
Daniel looked at Melissa.
It was a strange thing to do.
Not a plea exactly.
More like a man checking to see whether the last door he might have used was still open.
Melissa looked back at him.
"Don't look at me," she said quietly.
"I can't help you."
Daniel looked back at Gerald.
"Most of it is in an account in my name," he said.
"In a bank in Portugal."
The room absorbed that.
"Portugal," Ryan said.
"I was going to pay it back.
I had a plan—"
"You were going to marry my sister," Ryan said, "and then move four hundred thousand dollars of my family's money to Portugal, and you were going to pay it back."
"The investment I was making would have—"
"Stop." Ryan's voice was not loud.
But it stopped Daniel completely.
"Just stop talking."
Gerald was already on his phone.
I looked at Melissa.
She was still holding the water glass.
Her eyes were on the table in front of her, and she was very still, and I thought about all the months I had spent being angry at her — about the florist, about the cake, about the vendors, about the dress — and I thought about how much of that anger had been aimed at the wrong person.
Not all of it.
She had still taken the dress.
She had still walked into my apartment and opened my closet and taken the last thing my grandmother ever made for me.
But she had also just sat at a table and watched the man she married tell a room full of people that he'd been stealing from her family and had the money hidden in another country.
I reached across the table and set my hand over hers.
She looked up.
She didn't say anything.
May you like
Neither did I.
But she turned her hand over and held on, and that was enough for now.
