Chapter 8 - The Statement Melissa Kept
Janet called two days later.
"She has it," she said. "Melissa's got the original. A printed bank statement — Grant's name, the account number, all of it. He handed it to her himself. Said he wanted her to see the money was real. That he was serious about their future."
"Will she give it to us?"
A long pause.
"I talked to her last night," Janet said. "Told her everything. The timeline. When the account was opened. What he said to you at the photoshoot."
"How'd she take it?"
"She didn't say a word for about two minutes. Then she said, 'He opened that account before he even knew me.'"
"Yes."
"She cried for a long time. Then she asked me if you hated her."
I looked out the window at the backyard. The garden where we'd taken the pictures. The table where the blue box had sat.
"Tell her I don't," I said. "Tell her we both got lied to."
Janet let out a breath. "She'll give you the statement. She wants to. Her words — 'He doesn't get to walk away clean.'"
We set up a meeting the next afternoon. All three of us, at Janet's apartment.
It was the strangest hour of my life. Melissa was younger than I'd pictured, red-eyed, a wad of tissue in her fist, and she stood up when I came in like she couldn't decide whether to apologize or bolt.
"I didn't know," she said right away. "I mean — I knew he was married. But I believed him when he said it was over."
"I know," I said.
"I'm so sorry."
"I believe you."
She held out a manila envelope. Inside was a single printed statement — account number showing, Grant's name at the top — with a handwritten note paper-clipped to it. Different from the one Janet found.
This one said: For us. Nobody touches this. — G
I photographed every page and sent them to Marlene before I left the building.
She called within the hour.
"This is the account," she said. "Same number. This ties Grant directly to the hidden funds. With the transfer history, it's more than enough."
"What now?"
"Now we go to the hearing," she said. "And he answers for it."
The hearing was set for three weeks out.
In those three weeks, Grant tried twice more to reach me outside the lawyers.
Once by phone — I let it go to voicemail. He said he thought we could still settle this quietly, that things had spun out of control, that he was worried about the girls.
The second time he showed up at the house on a Saturday morning while the girls were at my mother's.
"I need you to understand something," he said, standing in the kitchen. "I made mistakes. I own that. But I never stopped caring about this family."
"You moved seventy-three thousand dollars out of our accounts over fourteen months," I said. "While I was pregnant. While I was raising your kids. While I was planning a photoshoot to make you happy."
He had nothing.
"The hearing's in eleven days," I said. "Save it for the courtroom."
May you like
He left. I stood at the window and watched his car back out of the driveway. Then I called my mother and asked her to bring the girls home early.
I wanted to hear their voices. I wanted to make dinner and check homework and read bedtime stories and feel the house full of the things that were still real.
