Chapter 9 - WHAT EMILY SAW
Emily was ten when the house burned.
For years, everyone treated her memories like fragments from a nightmare.
Now she told us one detail had always remained clear.
“Dad was upstairs before the smoke.”
My pulse slowed.
“What was he doing?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily wiped her face.
“I came out of my bedroom because I heard him arguing with Mom.”
My mother had always claimed she was downstairs when the fire started.
Emily continued.
“They were near the office.”
Our father kept financial documents in a small second-floor study.
“What were they arguing about?”
Emily closed her eyes.
“I remember Mom saying, ‘You can’t keep doing this.’”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Anything else?”
“Dad told her to lower her voice.”
Emily looked at me.
“Then he saw me.”
“What happened?”
“He told me to go back to bed.”
A chill moved through me.
“The fire was electrical.”
Daniel said.
Rebecca nodded.
“That does not necessarily mean the argument had anything to do with it.”
She was right.
But something bothered me.
“Why lie about me?”
Everyone looked at me.
“If Dad knew the fire was electrical, why tell Emily I caused it?”
Nobody had an answer.
Margaret did not speculate.
Rebecca did.
“Sometimes people create one lie to cover another.”
I thought about the insurance settlement.
The financial records.
The company.
Then I remembered something.
Our old house had been heavily insured.
My father had been struggling financially before the fire.
I looked at Rebecca.
“You don’t think—”
“No.”
She stopped me.
“Do not jump there.”
I nodded.
She was right.
There was no evidence my father caused the fire.
Electrical fires happened.
Bad wiring happened.
Coincidences happened.
Then Emily whispered,
“There was a second insurance payment.”
Rebecca turned toward her.
“What?”
“I heard Dad talking about it years later.”
Emily looked ashamed.
“I didn’t understand.”
“What payment?”
“He said the house fire saved the company twice.”
The room went still.
I stared at her.
“Twice?”
Emily nodded.
“He told someone the property claim kept us from bankruptcy.”
That explained the house.
But not the second time.
Rebecca opened her laptop.
“We need corporate records.”
Daniel stood near the window.
“My family’s acquisition team may already have them.”
Margaret looked sharply at him.
“You cannot access confidential due-diligence records for this.”
“I know.”
Daniel turned.
“But I can tell the buyer’s counsel they may have undisclosed litigation risk.”
Rebecca nodded slowly.
“That you can do.”
Emily looked at him.
“You’re really stopping the sale?”
Daniel met her eyes.
“If the company was built using stolen funds, the sale was never clean.”
Emily swallowed.
“And us?”
Daniel’s face became unreadable.
“We are not talking about us yet.”
The words devastated her.
I expected to feel satisfaction.
I didn’t.
I simply felt tired.
Then Rebecca’s phone rang.
She listened for less than thirty seconds.
When she hung up, she looked at me.
“We found the court file from your settlement.”
My heart started pounding.
“There is a signature authorizing the transfer of eight hundred thousand dollars.”
She paused.
May you like
“It is supposed to be yours.”
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