PART 10 — The Record They Said No One Had Received
Maya sent the Northbridge record to Derek’s attorney. She also advised me to make a formal report concerning the use of my signature. I took a night to think, aware that a report could have consequences I could not control. In the morning, I went with her to provide the documents and a clear account of what I knew.
The investigator who took my statement asked careful questions. Had I ever authorized Judith to sign for me? No. Had I discussed pledging Bell Weather? No. Did I know whether the document obtained money? Not from the records we had. Maya supplied copies and explained how Dad had preserved the earlier draft.
I left the office feeling neither relieved nor triumphant. I had reported what happened because a forged company document existed outside my family’s home. I could not leave its status to Derek’s promise that he would never use it again. Nina and my employees needed the ownership records to mean what they said.
Daniel prepared an agreement separating our finances while we considered what to do about the marriage. Derek’s attorney asked for time to review it. Leon’s clients accepted Derek’s remaining ninety thousand dollars and began negotiating a repayment plan tied to his income and the sale of his car. Judith would have to address her guarantee separately.
Northbridge’s records offered one more answer. Of the money Derek had invested, a significant share had been lost to a failed property purchase. The remainder passed through fees, commissions, and payments to earlier participants. Regulators were already examining the firm. Maya warned me that recovering much would be uncertain and slow.
Alan returned the forty thousand dollar commission after his attorney reviewed the agreement. He described it as a settlement to avoid a dispute over the referral. Derek applied the money to his debt. Judith told him Alan had done the right thing. She did not mention that her son’s loss might have been smaller if her brother had never brought him into the venture.
Dad’s safe remained in Maya’s storage room while we finished the estate inventory. I visited one afternoon to collect his old drafting table from Unit 214. Celia drove her truck. We carried it into my workshop, where the crew made space beside my desk. Beneath the tabletop, Dad had carved his initials during an early repair.
I had assumed all the safe’s contents were now accounted for. Maya asked me to check a list Dad had included with the brown envelope. It named the papers, the key, and a final item: a letter for me in Unit 214. We searched the remaining boxes and found it inside an old woodworking manual.
This letter was brief. Dad wrote that he regretted holding his concerns so long. He hoped I would examine the records, ask Derek directly, and make a decision I could live with. “You know the difference between helping someone and handing them your tools while they knock down your house,” he wrote. It sounded exactly like him.
He did not tell me to leave Derek. That absence mattered. Dad had gathered evidence because I needed the freedom to make my own choice with accurate facts. I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. For weeks I had imagined him guarding a final treasure inside the safe. What he left me was a way to ask better questions.
Derek requested a conversation without attorneys. Daniel said I could decide for myself. We met in a public garden near Dad’s old house, where the paths stayed open until dusk. Derek arrived on foot. He had sold his car that morning. He brought a folder but kept it closed on the bench between us.
He said he had given the investigator a statement acknowledging that he sent Northbridge the authorization. Judith had prepared it, but he chose to attach it. He had convinced himself that because I owned the company and he was my husband, I would eventually agree. Saying that aloud made him wince.
“I thought I could pay everything back before you found out,” he said. I believed that was what he hoped. I asked why he had carried a transfer into our kitchen after the lender refused the first document. Derek watched a groundskeeper empty a bin along the path. “Because I’d run out of time,” he said.
The folder held the complete Northbridge records his lawyer had obtained. He offered them to me. I told him to send copies through Maya. He accepted that without arguing. Then he said he had been offered a job managing supplier accounts in another city. The pay would support a repayment plan, and he intended to take it.
I asked about his mother. “She says I put her in this position,” he said. “I did. But she also kept telling me the company was something you should share if our marriage meant anything.” He rubbed his hands together. “I liked hearing it. That part is mine.” I respected the answer enough to listen.
He asked whether I could imagine us starting again after the investigation ended. I looked at the folder on the bench, the worn toes of his shoes, and the man who had once carried wet lumber through a storm for me. I still knew that man. I also knew he had prepared to trade away work that belonged to sixteen people.
“I can’t promise you that,” I said. Derek nodded as though he had expected it. We stayed until the groundskeeper reached our path. Before leaving, he asked whether Dad had known about the Northbridge referral. I said I did not know. Dad’s records showed suspicion and careful checks, not knowledge of every step.
As I walked toward my car, Judith called. She had heard Derek had spoken with me and wanted her own chance. I told her we could meet with Maya present. She said she would come the next day. Her voice sounded flatter than it had in my kitchen, and she asked one question before hanging up: “Did Arthur leave anything else?”
END PART 10
