Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Pale Blue Dress
I did not answer Melissa until Emily and Noah had left beneath a tunnel of sparklers.
I hugged my daughter.
I kissed Noah’s cheek.
I smiled for the photographer.
I watched their car disappear.
Only then did I walk around the side of the hotel and call the woman who had been sleeping with my husband.
Melissa answered on the first ring.
“Rebecca?”
Her voice sounded different.
No champagne confidence.
No condescension.
Just panic.
“What other documents?”
She was silent.
“Melissa.”
“I need to know you’re alone.”
I looked toward the hotel doors.
“I’m alone.”
“David thinks I went home.”
“Where are you?”
Another pause.
“In my car.”
“Where?”
“About twenty minutes away.”
“Why are you calling me?”
She exhaled shakily.
“Because he lied to me too.”
I closed my eyes.
“I’m not interested in becoming friends.”
“I know.”
“I don’t care what he promised you.”
“You should.”
My eyes opened.
“Why?”
“Because some of what he promised me belongs to you.”
I felt a chill.
“Explain.”
Melissa began crying quietly.
I hated that part of me wanted to tell her she had no right.
Instead, I waited.
“He told me you signed the agreement in April.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Because tonight when you said you never saw it, I realized something.”
“What?”
“The day he had it notarized, he told me you were in the building.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because I was.”
I leaned against the brick wall.
“Start at the beginning.”
Melissa sniffed.
“I met David through the company.”
“I know.”
“No.”
Her voice tightened.
“You know what he told you.”
I said nothing.
“I wasn’t just a client consultant.”
“What were you?”
“I worked in finance.”
That surprised me.
David had described Melissa as an outside marketing consultant hired for a six-month rebranding project.
“What kind of finance?”
“Compliance.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“For David’s company?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Almost three years.”
My stomach twisted.
David had told me they met eleven months ago.
“How long have you been sleeping with him?”
Silence.
“Melissa.”
“Two years.”
The parking lot tilted.
I pressed my palm against the wall.
“Two?”
“Yes.”
I thought about every event from those years.
Christmas dinners.
Emily’s engagement.
Our twenty-seventh anniversary.
David surprising me with a weekend in Charleston.
His mother’s surgery.
My sister’s fiftieth birthday.
Two years.
The affair had existed through all of it.
“Why should I believe anything you say?”
“You shouldn’t.”
The answer surprised me.
“But I have documents.”
“What documents?”
“Transfers.”
“Emails.”
“Copies of forms.”
“Why do you have them?”
“Because I was helping him.”
The honesty was almost worse.
“Helping him do what?”
Melissa began crying harder.
“I thought you knew.”
I laughed once.
It sounded empty.
“That sentence is becoming very popular tonight.”
“He said the separation was private because of Emily’s wedding.”
“That part was true.”
“He said you wanted the house situation settled quietly.”
“That was not.”
“He said you hated dealing with finances and asked him to handle everything.”
I almost smiled.
David had always mocked the fact that I tracked every household account to the penny.
“And you believed that?”
“At first.”
“What changed?”
“Numbers.”
I straightened.
“What numbers?”
“Money moving out of places it shouldn’t.”
My mouth went dry.
“Whose money?”
“Ours.”
She hesitated.
“Yours.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You work in finance.”
“I know what I saw.”
“How much?”
“At least nine hundred thousand.”
I stopped breathing.
“That’s impossible.”
“No.”
“We don’t have nine hundred thousand dollars sitting around.”
“Not in cash.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Credit lines.”
“Investment liquidations.”
“Company distributions.”
“The lake property.”
I felt sick.
“What happened to the lake property?”
“He borrowed against it.”
“No.”
“Rebecca.”
“My parents paid the down payment.”
“I know.”
“It’s in both our names.”
“I know.”
“He cannot do that without me.”
Melissa said nothing.
My eyes closed.
Of course.
My signature.
“How much?”
“Three hundred and twenty thousand.”
I pressed a hand against my stomach.
“When?”
“February.”
Three months before I discovered the affair.
“What else?”
“The home equity line.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
My knees weakened.
“Our mortgage is almost paid off.”
“Not anymore.”
I slid down against the brick wall until I was crouching.
“How?”
“He refinanced.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“June.”
“That was two months ago.”
“Yes.”
“I would have received documents.”
“He changed the mailing address.”
“To where?”
“A post office box.”
I could barely hear my own voice.
“Whose?”
“His.”
I wanted to hang up.
I wanted to throw the phone across the parking lot.
Instead, I asked the only useful question.
“Where did the money go?”
Melissa was silent too long.
“Where?”
“An LLC.”
“What LLC?”
“EMH Holdings.”
The initials meant nothing at first.
Then I understood.
Emily Marie Harrison.
Our daughter.
“No.”
Melissa’s voice broke.
“Yes.”
I stood so quickly I became dizzy.
“He used Emily’s initials?”
“Yes.”
“Is she involved?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think?”
“I have never seen her sign anything.”
“That doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
“I know.”
“Whose name is on the company?”
“David’s.”
“Anyone else?”
Melissa hesitated.
“Mine.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The part she had not wanted to say.
“You helped him steal from me.”
“I thought it was marital restructuring.”
“You helped him put my money into a company you owned with my husband.”
“He said it would become ours after the divorce.”
I could not believe the sentence.
“Ours.”
“I know how that sounds.”
“You were planning your future with assets stolen from me.”
“I didn’t know they were stolen.”
“You never wondered why my signature appeared on everything?”
“He showed me messages.”
“What messages?”
“Between you and him.”
“I never sent them.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Because he made one mistake.”
I waited.
“He showed me an email from you approving the lake loan.”
“And?”
“The email address was wrong.”
My mind sharpened.
“How wrong?”
“One letter.”
David had created a fake account.
Of course he had.
“I noticed three weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I confronted him.”
“What did he say?”
“That you used both addresses.”
“I don’t.”
“I know.”
“You stayed with him anyway.”
Melissa’s silence told me everything.
“Yes.”
I felt no sympathy.
Not yet.
Maybe never.
“What happened tonight?”
“He told me you were going to make a public announcement.”
“What announcement?”
“That you had both separated.”
“He said the video toast was your idea.”
I almost laughed.
“He said after the toast I would sit beside him openly and everyone would understand.”
I looked toward the ballroom windows.
The wedding was ending behind them.
“He wanted to use my daughter’s wedding as his launch party.”
“I didn’t think of it that way.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
Melissa flinched audibly.
Then she whispered.
“There’s more.”
I almost did not want to hear it.
“What?”
“The money in EMH Holdings.”
“What about it?”
“Most of it is gone.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You are listed as an owner.”
“Minority owner.”
“Where did it go?”
“I found three outgoing wires.”
“How much?”
“Six hundred and forty thousand total.”
“To whom?”
“That’s the problem.”
“What problem?”
“The receiving company doesn’t exist anymore.”
I stared into the dark parking lot.
“What was it called?”
“Blue Cedar Consulting.”
The name struck something in my memory.
I had heard it before.
Years ago.
At a dinner.
David’s brother Mark had mentioned Blue Cedar while arguing with their father.
Then their father had died six weeks later.
“What does Blue Cedar have to do with David?”
Melissa hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
“You called me because you know something.”
“I know the beneficiary name.”
My skin prickled.
“Whose?”
“It wasn’t David.”
“Then whose?”
Melissa took a breath.
“Eleanor Harrison.”
I stopped moving.
David’s mother.
My mother-in-law.
The woman who had hugged me during the ceremony that afternoon.
The woman who had whispered that I looked beautiful.
The woman who had sat three chairs away while David removed me from my own daughter’s family table.
“You’re telling me Eleanor received six hundred and forty thousand dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Then my phone buzzed with another incoming message.
Melissa had sent a screenshot.
The wire transfer appeared exactly as she described it.
BLUE CEDAR CONSULTING.
$640,000.
BENEFICIARY: ELEANOR HARRISON.
I stared at the date.
It had been sent eleven days earlier.
Then I noticed the memo line.
My stomach dropped.
PROPERTY RESTORATION.
“What does property restoration mean?”
Melissa answered quietly.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
I stared at the screen.
A second message arrived.
This one was from Eleanor.
Not to me.
Melissa had forwarded it from David’s phone.
It contained only one sentence.
May you like
ONCE REBECCA IS OFF THE DEED, EVERYTHING GOES BACK TO THE FAMILY WHERE IT BELONGS.
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