Chapter 7 - The Account With Lily’s Name.
I did not plug the flash drive into my laptop.
Three days earlier, I would have.
Three days earlier, I still believed that every answer could be reached by moving faster than Daniel.
Now I understood that speed was how he lived.
He counted on everybody else reacting before they had time to think.
I put the drive in a hotel envelope, sealed it, and wrote the time across the flap.
Harold watched me from the doorway.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I showed him the label.
His eyes narrowed.
“Lily Fund.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Harold looked toward the hallway where Daniel had disappeared.
“Neither have I.”
Megan came upstairs ten minutes later.
She checked the room, checked me, then checked the sealed envelope.
“You’re finally learning not to click mysterious things,” she said.
Under any other circumstances, I would have smiled.
Megan worked in compliance for a regional bank and treated unknown flash drives like live insects.
She called my attorney, Rebecca Sloan, who had been helping me quietly since the lender contacted me.
Rebecca answered on the second ring even though it was nearly nine at night.
“Do not open it on your personal computer,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
“Keep it secured.”
“Photograph the label and where you found it.”
“Done.”
Megan raised an approving eyebrow.
Rebecca continued.
“And Jennifer, I know this is emotional, but do not confront Daniel about the drive tonight.”
“He already knows I have copies of the loan paperwork.”
“That is different.”
“If he left a device behind, let me help you handle it carefully.”
I looked at the sealed envelope.
“Okay.”
The word felt unnatural.
I had spent years trying to solve every household emergency before Daniel could accuse me of overreacting.
Now I was learning the usefulness of waiting.
Downstairs, the ballroom had finally emptied.
The hotel staff had cleared most of the tables.
Only a few white flowers remained near the windows, waiting to be moved for the next morning’s event.
Noah’s event.
The thought felt unreal.
Chloe sat in the lobby with Patricia.
They were not speaking.
They did not look like allies.
They looked like two people trapped in the same airport during a canceled flight.
When I approached, Chloe stood.
“Is Daniel gone?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No.”
She nodded as if she expected that.
Patricia looked at me.
“What happens tomorrow?”
I glanced toward the ballroom doors.
“The second baptism?”
She nodded.
Chloe’s face tightened.
“I’m canceling it.”
Patricia looked at her.
“You don’t have to do that because of us.”
Chloe’s eyes flashed.
“I’m not doing it because of you.”
“I’m doing it because the whole thing was built on a lie.”
Patricia accepted the correction.
Chloe rubbed her thumb along the stroller handle.
“My parents are driving in from Indianapolis.”
“They think Daniel and I are moving into a house together next month.”
I closed my eyes for a second.
Daniel had not just lied sideways between two women.
He had lied outward to two entire families.
“What did he tell them about me?” I asked.
Chloe looked embarrassed.
“That you and he had been separated for more than a year.”
“That you were dating someone else.”
I stared at her.
Megan made a sound under her breath.
Patricia turned sharply.
“He said that?”
Chloe nodded.
“He said the divorce paperwork was delayed because of property issues.”
My grandmother’s house.
Suddenly the loan application seemed to belong to an even uglier story.
If Daniel could create a paper trail showing debt against the property, maybe he had intended to tell Chloe the house was being divided in a divorce.
Maybe he had intended to tell me the money was needed to save his business.
Every person received the explanation most likely to make them cooperate.
My phone rang.
Rebecca.
“I just emailed you something,” she said.
“What?”
“The lender sent an updated packet after we asked for all attachments.”
“Open the email, not the flash drive.”
I did.
There were twelve pages.
Most were routine disclosures I had already seen.
Page nine was not.
It was a schedule of assets Daniel had submitted as part of the application.
Our joint savings account appeared first.
My grandmother’s house appeared second.
Then came an account I did not recognize.
Mercer Family Education Custodial Account.
Beneficiary: Lily Mercer.
Balance: $74,860.
I stopped breathing for a second.
“Rebecca.”
“I see it,” she said.
“What is this?”
“That is what I was going to ask you.”
“I have never opened an account like this.”
“Neither has Megan,” I added.
Megan leaned over my shoulder.
Her face changed.
“Jen, look at the contribution history.”
I scrolled.
The first deposit had been made two weeks after Lily’s birth.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
The sender was Harold Mercer.
I looked across the lobby.
Harold had just returned from taking a call outside.
“Harold.”
He walked toward us.
“What?”
I held up the screen.
“Did you give Daniel twenty-five thousand dollars for Lily?”
His face answered before his mouth did.
“Yes.”
Patricia turned toward him.
“When?”
“After she was born.”
Harold looked at me.
“I told Daniel it was for an education account.”
“He said you two had already opened one.”
I felt cold.
“We hadn’t.”
Harold stared at the screen.
“How much is in it?”
“Seventy-four thousand.”
His eyebrows pulled together.
“That’s too much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I gave twenty-five.”
“Patricia?”
She shook her head.
“I gave five thousand in a savings bond, not cash.”
Megan scrolled further.
“There are transfers in from multiple accounts.”
I recognized one immediately.
My joint checking account with Daniel.
Smaller transfers had been made every month, usually on days our mortgage and utilities cleared.
Amounts small enough that I had treated them as ordinary household movement.
Three hundred.
Five hundred.
Seven hundred.
Then larger deposits from accounts I did not know.
Rebecca’s voice came through the phone.
“Jennifer, do not assume that balance is still there.”
My stomach tightened.
I scrolled to the latest statement.
The ending balance was not $74,860.
That was the amount Daniel had claimed on the loan application two months earlier.
The current balance was $3,412.
The lobby seemed to go silent around me.
Harold took the phone.
He read the statement twice.
“Where did it go?”
Megan pointed to a withdrawal line.
“There.”
A transfer of $68,000.
Destination: North Harbor Strategy operating account.
Date: six weeks ago.
The same week Daniel had signed the parentage acknowledgment for Noah.
Patricia covered her mouth.
Harold looked like someone had struck him without touching him.
“That money was for Lily.”
His voice was almost a whisper.
I could not speak.
For the first time that night, the betrayal stopped being about me.
Daniel had taken money that his father believed was being saved for his daughter.
He had used Lily’s name as a label on a balance sheet.
He had shown that balance to a lender as if it were his own resource.
Then he had drained it into the same company he claimed needed my house.
Chloe stood slowly.
“What was North Harbor spending money on?”
Nobody knew.
Then her face changed.
“I might.”
She took out her phone.
“Daniel asked me to photograph a folder at his apartment last month.”
“Why?” I asked.
“He said he was traveling and needed the numbers from a vendor invoice.”
She searched through her photos.
“I didn’t understand what I was looking at.”
She found the image.
It showed a spreadsheet printed on paper.
Most of the lines were too small to read.
Megan zoomed in.
One column contained payee names.
Another contained amounts.
There were hotel payments, car services, restaurants, and something labeled “E.N. advance.”
Then one line caught my eye.
“Waverly rent.”
Six thousand dollars.
Another line read “Hart medical.”
Another read “Mercer residence bridge.”
Harold pointed to the bottom.
“What is that?”
Chloe zoomed further.
A payment of forty thousand dollars had been made to a company called Red Pine Holdings.
The note beside it read only two words.
“Settlement reserve.”
Megan looked at me.
“Do you recognize Red Pine?”
“No.”
Harold did.
His face went gray.
“That company belongs to Eric Nolan’s brother.”
Before anyone could speak, my phone buzzed.
A new email had arrived from Daniel.
The subject line was simple.
“STOP.”
Inside was one sentence.
“If you keep digging into North Harbor, you are going to hurt people who had nothing to do with us.”
I read it aloud.
Chloe looked at Noah.
Patricia looked at Lily’s account statement.
Harold looked at the forty-thousand-dollar transfer.
Megan looked at me.
“What does that even mean?”
I stared at Daniel’s message.
For the first time all night, I did not think he was talking about embarrassment.
May you like
I thought he was talking about money.
A lot more money than we had found so far.
