Chapter 4 - I Froze the Money
I didn't empty accounts.
I didn't change locks on company property.
I didn't do anything dramatic enough to hurt my own legal position.
I called our CPA.
Then our business attorney.
Then the bank.
Access controls were tightened according to the company's operating agreement while the disputed transactions were reviewed.
Ethan was furious.
“You're treating me like a criminal.”
“I'm treating you like a business partner who hid $186,400 from the other owner.”
“This company exists because of me.”
“It exists because we built it together.”
That was difficult for him to hear.
The company started twelve years earlier with Ethan doing renovations from a used pickup and me managing invoices from our apartment.
Somewhere along the way, success became something his family believed belonged primarily to him.
Margaret called that afternoon.
I didn't answer.
She left a voicemail.
“You've always kept score, Claire. Family doesn't work that way.”
I saved it.
That evening Natalie retrieved the baby-clothes box from my house while Ethan was present.
The blue folder was gone.
I called him.
“Where is it?”
“What?”
“Don't.”
Silence.
“I didn't take it.”
“Then your mother did.”
“I don't know.”
But I remembered the doorbell video.
Margaret had asked whether I'd found “the papers.”
Ethan knew what she meant.
So either he'd lied to her too—
or the blue folder contained something even he hadn't expected me to discover.
The next morning our CPA called.
“Claire, I found the lake house.”
“I already know about it.”
“No,” he said carefully. “I don't think you do.”
The construction invoices weren't the problem.
May you like
The original down payment was.
Part of it appeared to have come from money that should have been sitting in an account created for our unborn daughter.
