Chapter 5: What Was in the Storage Unit
I let it ring twice.
Then I answered.
"What storage unit?" His voice had lost the flatness.
Something sharper had replaced it.
"Where did you hear that?"
"Sarah got a text.
From one of your employees.
Someone named Donna." A pause.
"What did you put in a storage unit, Mom?"
Donna.
I had worked with Donna for eleven years.
She ran the back inventory, knew every supplier, every seasonal order.
She had watched Sarah dismantle the product system piece by piece and said nothing to me — until three weeks ago, when she had come to my office, closed the door, and placed a USB drive on my desk.
"You should look at this before you do anything," Donna had said.
"I should have come to you sooner.
I'm sorry I didn't."
I had looked at it that night.
What was on it had changed the shape of everything I thought I knew.
"Greg," I said, "the storage unit is mine.
What's in it is mine.
And what happens next depends entirely on what you and Sarah decide to do in the next forty-eight hours."
"That's a threat."
"It's a choice.
I'm giving you one."
"What's on that drive, Mom." Not a question.
He already knew there was a drive.
Which meant Sarah had told him.
Which meant Sarah had known about Donna.
"Come to the house tonight," I said.
"Alone.
Not with Sarah.
Just you."
Silence.
"Why alone?"
"Because what I need to say to you, I want to say to my son.
Not to whoever you've become when she's standing next to you."
A long pause.
"Seven o'clock," he said finally.
"I'll have the new key waiting."
I hung up and called Donna immediately.
She answered on the second ring.
"She knows," I said.
"I figured she might." Donna's voice was steady.
"She had access to my work phone for two weeks last fall.
Remember when I thought I'd left it in the break room?"
"She went through your messages."
"She went through everything." A pause.
"Beth, I need to tell you something I left off the drive.
I didn't include it because I wasn't sure it was my place.
But after this morning — I think you need to know."
"Tell me."
"The wholesale supplier Sarah switched us to.
The one she replaced your artisan accounts with." Donna paused.
"Her brother-in-law owns it.
Her sister's husband.
She was getting a fifteen percent referral fee on every order placed through the boutique account."
I sat very still.
"How long?"
"Fourteen months."
I did the math without wanting to.
The boutique's wholesale orders over fourteen months.
Fifteen percent of that number.
"Do you have documentation?"
"Supplier invoices, the referral agreement she signed, and three months of bank transfers to a personal account she opened last year.
It's all on the drive.
I just — I put it in a separate folder.
I wasn't sure you'd seen it."
"I hadn't opened that folder yet."
"I know," Donna said quietly.
"I'm sorry, Beth.
I should have come to you the day I found it."
"You came when you were ready.
That's enough."
I thanked her and ended the call.
I sat at my desk for a long moment.
Sarah hadn't just been careless with my business.
She hadn't just been entitled or thoughtless or lazy.
She had been running a scheme inside my boutique for over a year.
Replacing my suppliers with her brother-in-law's company.
Collecting a personal fee on every order.
Using my business account, my reputation, my thirty years of customer relationships to line her own pocket.
And Greg.
Greg, who had watched.
Who had dismissed me every time I tried to talk to him.
Who had sl@mmed his hand on my table and told me I had no right to correct her.
Had he known?
That was the question I couldn't answer yet.
That was the question that would determine everything.
At seven o'clock, I heard a car in the driveway.
Greg knocked.
I opened the door.
He looked older than he had that morning.
Tired in a way that went past one bad day.
I stepped back and let him in.
He sat at the kitchen table — the same table where he had sl@mmed his hand the night before.
He looked at the surface of it for a moment.
"Where's Sarah?" I asked.
"Her mother called her." He looked up.
"Apparently they had quite a conversation."
"Yes."
"She's been crying for three hours."
I sat down across from him.
"Greg," I said.
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth."
He met my eyes.
"Did you know about the supplier arrangement?"
His expression didn't change immediately.
But his hands, flat on the table, pressed down slightly.
"What supplier arrangement?"
I opened my laptop and turned it to face him.
The referral agreement.
Sarah's signature.
The bank transfer records.
The supplier invoices with her brother-in-law's company name at the top.
Greg looked at the screen for a long time.
His hands didn't move.
"No," he said finally.
His voice had gone very quiet.
"I didn't know."
I watched his face.
"I need to know if that's true," I said.
He looked up from the screen.
May you like
And for the first time since I couldn't remember when, my son looked exactly like the boy I had raised.
"I didn't know, Mom."
