Chapter 7: What Janet Said
Janet didn't ask questions until the tea was made.
She set two mugs on the kitchen table, sat down across from me, and waited.
That was always her way.
She had been doing it since we were children — the steady one, the one who let you arrive at your own words in your own time.
I told her everything from the beginning.
The cookout.
The ultimatum.
The first folder, then the second.
The photograph of a girl with Marcus's eyes and a name that matched his other daughter's.
Diane's phone call.
Grace's instructions.
Janet listened without moving.
When I finished, she wrapped both hands around her mug and looked at me.
"How long have you known something was wrong?" she asked.
"Eight months.
Since I found the first folder."
"I mean before that."
I looked at the table.
"A long time," I said.
"I know." She wasn't unkind about it.
"I watched you shrink, Claire.
Every time I saw you, there was a little less of you.
You stopped talking about your own life.
Everything was Marcus's business, Tessa's moods, keeping the house running.
You stopped having opinions at dinner." She paused.
"I didn't say anything because you didn't ask me to."
"You should have said something anyway."
"Maybe." She turned her mug in a slow circle.
"Would you have listened?"
I didn't answer, because we both already knew.
"What does Grace think your exposure is?" Janet asked.
"With the loans."
"She thinks the forged signatures are the key.
If they're forged — and I believe they are — then I'm a victim of the fraud, not a participant in it.
But she needs to verify the signatures against documents I actually signed."
"And if some of them are real?
If you signed something without realizing what it was?"
"Then it gets more complicated." I wrapped my hands around the mug.
"But Grace said a pattern of misrepresentation still protects me.
If Marcus consistently presented documents in a misleading way, that changes the legal picture."
Janet nodded slowly.
"And this LLC.
Harwell-Vance Holdings."
"Grace is running it tonight."
"What do you think it is?"
"I think it's where the money went." I looked up at her.
"I think Marcus has been moving money out of the business and out of our joint accounts for longer than eight months.
I think the debts in my name were partly to cover what he was moving.
And I think Tessa — his Tessa, the one I've been living with — has been helping him keep me distracted."
Janet was quiet for a moment.
"The scene at the cookout," she said.
"Yes."
"You think it was deliberate."
"I think a seventeen-year-old who has known about her father's hidden accounts for four months and who sends him a message asking if I found the second folder — I think that girl is not an innocent bystander." I paused.
"But I also think she's seventeen.
And I think her father put her in an impossible position."
"Both things can be true."
"Yes."
Janet reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"You're not the one who made this mess," she said.
"I know."
"But you're going to be the one who has to clean it up."
"I know that too."
She squeezed my hand once and let go.
"Sleep," she said.
"Grace at eight.
Everything else after."
I nodded and picked up my mug.
My phone lit up on the table.
Not Marcus this time.
It was a number I didn't recognize — different from Diane's, different from anyone in my contacts.
The text read: *Claire, this is Tessa.
His Tessa.
I need to talk to you before tomorrow.
May you like
Please.
I'm the one who left the second folder where you could find it.*
