My sister-in-law raised her champagne glass at my anniversary party and announced that my husband had married a liar. The gold number-eight candles had not even been lit, but every conversation in the room died at once. Megan Carter stood beneath our wedding portrait with a smile that told me she had been waiting years for this moment.
Part 3
Daniel faced his sister. “What else was on the laptop?”
Megan began talking too quickly. She claimed an employee must have used her computer, that she sometimes left it unattended, and that the security company had made a mistake. No one interrupted her, and without an argument to fight against, her excuses seemed to shrink in the quiet room.
I opened the second file. Bank statements appeared on the television, followed by a chart showing payments from Carter Building Supply to a vendor called Buckeye Project Consulting. The transfers began eighteen months earlier with small amounts, then grew steadily larger.
Daniel recognized the name. “Buckeye handles permit research for us.”
“No one handles it,” I said. “The business address is a rented mailbox. The company was formed by Megan under her middle name, and every payment ended in an account she controls.”
His mother lowered herself onto the couch. His father, who had founded the company forty years earlier, gripped the back of a chair with both hands. “How much?” he asked.
Megan turned toward him. “Dad, it isn’t what it looks like.”
“How much?” Daniel repeated.
“Eighty-three thousand six hundred and forty dollars,” I said. “That does not include the questionable expense reimbursements still being reviewed.”
The number silenced even the guests who had been whispering. Megan had managed vendor accounts since returning to the family business two years earlier, and Daniel had trusted her enough to approve batches of invoices without inspecting every one. I had noticed the repeated round amounts during a quarterly review, but before I could confront her, someone attempted to enter my account and alter the records.
Daniel stared at his sister as though he were seeing a stranger. “You stole from the company, Emily found the trail, and you tried to destroy our marriage before she could tell me.”
“I borrowed money,” Megan shouted. “I was going to put it back.”
“With what?” their father asked. “The boutique that closed? The trips you charged to the company? That new car you told us you leased with a bonus I never approved?”
Megan’s expression crumpled, but the anger beneath it remained. She pointed at me with a shaking hand and said I had turned the company against her. According to Megan, I had taken the office that should have belonged to family, convinced Daniel that every decision needed my approval, and made her feel like a guest in the business her father had built.
“I cleaned up accounts that were six months behind,” I said. “I never took anything from you. I asked you to provide receipts and follow the same rules as everyone else.”
“You were waiting for me to make a mistake.” Tears streaked her makeup, though her voice stayed bitter. “You wanted Daniel all to yourself.”
Daniel stepped between us. “Emily gave up a better-paying job to save this company. She risked our home while you disappeared whenever Dad needed help. Do not rewrite our lives because the truth embarrasses you.”
“I did this for you,” Megan cried. “If she were gone, you would remember that your real family came first.”
A grief deeper than anger settled over Daniel’s face. He told Megan that Emily was his family and that love did not require him to excuse theft or cruelty. He had defended his sister for years, but there was nothing uncertain in his voice now.
Megan turned desperately to their parents. Her mother covered her mouth and wept, while her father told her the company’s attorney would contact her Monday morning. He said the records would be given to the police and that being his daughter would not protect her from the consequences.
“You would have me arrested?” she whispered.
“You made thirty-two people help finance your lies,” he answered. “Some of them have worked for us longer than you’ve been alive.”
Megan looked around the room for someone willing to rescue her. She found only stunned relatives and friends who had watched her humiliate me beside my own anniversary cake. Her gaze finally returned to Daniel, and for an instant she looked like the little sister he remembered rather than the woman who had tried to ruin us.
Daniel opened the front door. “Give me your keys to the office and the company laptop. Then leave.”
She removed the keys from her purse and dropped them onto the entry table. The metallic clatter sounded unnaturally loud. After setting down the laptop, she paused beside me and whispered that I had won.
“This was never a contest,” I told her. “That is the part you never understood.”
The door closed behind her. Daniel remained in the entryway for several seconds, his hand resting on the knob, while rain tapped softly against the windows. When he finally turned around, the celebration we had planned no longer existed.
