Chapter 9 - My Father's Second Lie

Dad spread the foundry's old ledgers across Mom's dining room table. He looked like a man who'd been carrying too much for years.

"North Path rented a corner of our warehouse years ago," he said. "They stored medical office equipment. They paid us. That's it."

"And you never mentioned that to Mom?"

"I mentioned the warehouse rental. I didn't know it was the same company Denise investigated until they called asking me to keep quiet."

"When did they call?"

"Last week."

I stared at him. "You kept that to yourself even after Harper pushed her?"

His hands stopped moving. "I was going to tell her when she felt better."

"You mean when it stopped making you look guilty."

Dad shut his eyes. "Maybe both."

We found years of rental checks and one forty-thousand-dollar transfer from Marlowe Holdings marked CONSULTING.

Dad leaned close to the screen. "I've never done consulting for them."

I printed the bank record and called the accountant, Brenda Cho. She said she hadn't seen the transfer before because it had been classified to an account labeled "legacy receivables" during an old software migration. She promised to pull the complete audit trail.

Harper threatened Jonah with a lawsuit. Then she texted me: DID YOU REMEMBER TO EAT? She used to leave notes like that. I wanted the woman I remembered to be real.

Mom found me staring at the phone. "You can miss somebody who hurt you," she said. "It doesn't mean they get to keep doing it."

We were still at the table when Brenda called back. "Nathan, I traced the forty thousand. Somebody moved it out two days later, using a company authorization token issued under your name."

"I didn't authorize that."

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"I know. But the destination account belongs to a firm called East Ferry Media."

I knew that name too. It was the agency where Harper said she'd worked in Denver. The one she had told me she owned.