Chapter 6: The Accountant's Report
Carol called on Friday at 11 a.m., as promised.
I was at my desk.
The house was quiet.
Eric had moved into a short-term rental on Wednesday.
Diane had gone to stay with her sister in Tucson.
Kyle had loaded his motorcycle parts into a rented van on Tuesday afternoon and driven away without saying goodbye to anyone.
The house felt like itself again.
"The report is in," Carol said.
"Do you want the summary or all of it?"
"All of it."
"The sixty thousand we already knew about.
Eric's personal account, confirmed.
The eighteen thousand breaks down like this: twelve to Diane, as she admitted.
The remaining six went to a joint account held by Eric and Kyle."
I sat up straighter.
"Kyle."
"Kyle.
Opened fourteen months ago.
The six thousand was deposited in three installments.
We believe it was used to cover the cost of the storage unit for the motorcycle inventory and a down payment on a commercial space Kyle was looking at."
"Eric was funding Kyle's business."
"With your money.
Yes."
I thought about Kyle sprawled on my sofa with his shoes on the cushions.
Kyle laughing in my kitchen.
Kyle's motorcycle parts filling my garage.
"Is there anything in the account that looks like it came from Paige's family?" I asked.
"Nothing.
She appears to be exactly what she said she was — someone Eric misled.
Her family money never entered the picture."
"Okay." I exhaled slowly.
"So the full picture is: Eric draining the joint account to fund his exit, his mother taking a cut for her own relocation costs, and his nephew getting seed money for a business venture."
"That's the full picture."
"And the separation agreement?"
"Eric's attorney came back this morning.
He's agreed to the repayment schedule.
Full sixty thousand over thirty-six months, secured against his pension.
He also agreed to the terms on the house — no claim, no contest."
I looked out the window.
"He signed?"
"He signed."
The neighbor's dog was in the yard across the street, the same one I'd seen the morning all of this began.
It was sitting in a patch of sun, doing nothing in particular.
"What about Diane?" I asked.
"That's the part I wanted to discuss.
Technically, the twelve thousand she moved constitutes unauthorized transfer from a joint account she had no access rights to.
We could pursue it separately."
"But?"
"But it would require Eric to testify against his own mother.
He's agreed to the separation terms, and pushing this further might destabilize that agreement.
It's your call."
I thought about Diane sitting in the porch chair.
The moment her arms had loosened.
The way she'd looked at the yard instead of at me.
"Let it go," I said.
"The twelve thousand comes out of Eric's repayment total.
He can sort out the family side of it himself."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure.
I don't need her money.
I need her out of my house, and she's already gone."
Carol was quiet for a moment.
"You're being generous."
"I'm being practical," I said.
"There's a difference."
A pause.
Then: "The divorce filing goes in Monday.
Standard timeline from there — ninety days, uncontested.
You should be clear by autumn."
Autumn.
The word landed softly.
"Thank you, Carol," I said.
"For all of it."
"That's what I'm here for." A brief warmth in her voice, professional but real.
"You handled this well.
A lot of people in your position would have come apart."
I looked around my office.
The client files were back on the shelves where they belonged.
The gaming setup was gone.
The room smelled like the candle I'd lit on Wednesday morning, the first morning the house had been mine again.
"I had time to prepare," I said.
After I hung up, I sat for a while without doing anything.
Then I got up, went to the kitchen, and made coffee.
One cup.
I didn't think about it until it was already in my hand.
May you like
But I wasn't finished yet.
Because that afternoon, my phone rang with a number I didn't recognize — and the voice on the other end said something that made me set the cup down very carefully on the counter.
