Chapter 8: Ten O'Clock
Marcus arrived at nine fifty-eight.
He was dressed the way he always dressed — neat, understated, the kind of careful that looks effortless.
He accepted the coffee I offered and sat down at the kitchen table as if this were an ordinary visit.
Thomas placed the bank statements on the table between them.
Marcus looked at them.
He didn't reach for them.
"You already knew about these," Thomas said.
"I told your parents about the account three years ago," Marcus said.
"I thought they should know it existed."
"And the deposits?"
Marcus wrapped both hands around his mug.
"I was trying to do something for you.
For Daniel's memory.
I know that sounds—"
"Stop," Thomas said.
Marcus stopped.
"The account is connected to a shell company you incorporated," Thomas said.
"The same law firm you used for your investment partnership.
The same pattern appears in two other accounts with two other people's names on them.
Paul Garrett has already referred the matter to the IRS."
The color didn't drain from Marcus's face all at once.
It went in stages.
"You've already—"
"Yes," Thomas said.
"Before you came through that door."
Marcus set his mug down.
He looked at the table for a moment.
Then he looked up, and the warmth was gone entirely now — not hostile, just absent, like a light switched off.
"I needed clean accounts," he said.
"Names with no connection to my business.
I wasn't going to let anything land on you — I had an exit plan, a way to unwind it all before—"
"Before what?" I said.
"Before someone found a box under a mattress?"
He looked at me.
"I knew Eleanor had found the statements.
I didn't know she'd hidden them.
I thought she'd confronted Thomas and he'd decided to leave it alone."
"She was protecting him," I said.
"She was terrified of what she'd found and she didn't know how to tell him.
She spent six months in this house trying to work up the courage."
Something moved across Marcus's face.
Not guilt, exactly.
Something older and harder to name.
"Daniel would have hated this," Thomas said quietly.
Marcus's jaw tightened.
"Don't."
"He would have.
You know he would have."
"I said don't." Marcus pushed back from the table.
"You don't get to use him.
You barely talked about him after he died.
You packed up your grief and moved away and built this—" he gestured at the kitchen, the house, the life— "and the rest of us just had to keep living in the place where he wasn't."
The room held that.
Thomas didn't look away.
"I know," he said.
"I know I did that.
And I'm sorry for it.
But that's not what this is.
You put my name on something illegal.
You used Daniel's phone to threaten my wife.
Whatever you were carrying — this wasn't grief.
This was a choice."
Marcus looked at his hands.
"What happens now?" he said.
"The IRS contact has everything," Thomas said.
"I can't undo that.
I wouldn't if I could."
"And the other two accounts?"
"Paul is notifying them today."
Marcus nodded slowly.
He stood up.
He straightened his jacket — the small, automatic gesture of a man composing himself.
At the kitchen doorway he stopped.
"For what it's worth," he said, without turning around, "I never intended for it to touch you.
That's the truth."
"I believe you," Thomas said.
"It doesn't change anything."
Marcus left.
The front door closed behind him — not slammed, just shut.
I listened to his car start in the driveway.
Listened to it pull away.
"Are you all right?" I said.
Thomas looked at the bank statements still spread across the table.
"I will be," he said.
May you like
"I just need a minute."
I left him the minute.
