Chapter 7 - Lines in the Sand
The vinyl booth at the Maple Street Diner smelled of stale coffee and fried onions. Megan sat across from me, her knuckles white as she gripped a mug of tea she hadn't touched. Sarah sat beside me, having quietly slid the paperwork and additional digital files across the table before ordering black coffee.
"A bigamist," Megan repeated, her voice pitched low in disbelief as she stared at Sarah's marriage certificate. "He married you in Seattle six years ago, never filed the final dissolution papers, and then walked into Claire's life pretending to be a single, upstanding corporate rising star."
"He told the courts we had an informal separation agreement that was pending finalization," Sarah explained, her gaze fixed on the steam rising from her cup. "When I wouldn't sign away my rights to support our son, he went quiet. Then I found out he had relocated across the state, changed his professional name slightly on LinkedIn, and started over. He thinks he can outrun his paperwork."
"He can't outrun a criminal fraud investigation," my father said.
We all jumped slightly. I hadn't heard him walk into the diner. He slid into the booth next to me, his weathered face set in a hard, uncompromising line. He had driven over immediately after Megan called him from the parking lot.
"Dad," I breathed. "How did you find us?"
"Megan told me you were heading to Maple Street," he said, pulling a folded document from his coat pocket and laying it flat on the table. "And while you two were at the storage unit, I went by Eric's office building with the police report from last night. I spoke to his regional director."
Eric's office. A cold knot formed in my stomach. "Dad, you didn't."
"I did," my father said quietly. "And it turns out Eric hasn't just been stealing from joint marital accounts. His firm has been conducting an internal audit for the last three weeks regarding missing client escrow deposits. Guess whose name was on the transfer authorizations for the dummy accounts?"
Sarah let out a sharp breath. "His firm's accounts? That's federal."
"That's why he panicked when he realized Claire was in the hospital and your parents were changing the locks," my father continued, looking directly into my eyes. "He wasn't just hiding a personal secret. He was liquidating everything because the audit was closing in on him. He planned to take our savings, leave the state, and pin the corporate embezzlement on an administrative assistant he hired six months ago."
The room seemed to spin slightly. The man I had lived with, the man who had criticized my cooking, dictated my schedule, and made me feel like I was a burden for needing medical care during a high-risk pregnancy, was nothing more than a desperate criminal running out of time.
"So what do we do?" Megan asked, looking between my father and me. "Do we wait for the police to pick him up?"
"No," I said, a strange, steady calm washing over me as the fog of self-doubt finally burned away completely. "We don't wait for him to control the narrative anymore. If the police are looking for him regarding the corporate audit, and we have the proof of his bigamy and asset stripping, we go straight to his lawyer and the lead investigator together."
May you like
Sarah nodded slowly, a fierce light entering her eyes. "And I have the custody files that prove he tried to forge my signature on financial releases. We can lock him out from every possible direction."
---
