Chapter 3 - The Price of One Photograph
Rachel didn’t go home.
By noon she and Noah were staying in Megan’s two-bedroom condo in Oak Brook, where Noah slept on the pullout couch and Rachel sat at the dining table with bank statements scattered around her.
Daniel continued texting.
Never angry.
Never threatening.
That was his specialty.
Please come home so we can discuss this rationally.
Then:
Noah shouldn’t be dragged into an adult misunderstanding.
Rachel read that one twice.
He had put Noah into it the moment he put something in their dinner.
The hospital called that afternoon.
The preliminary findings were consistent with exposure to a sedating medication, though the physician carefully explained that the result alone could not establish how or when it had been ingested.
Rachel asked for copies of everything.
She also told the doctor exactly what had happened.
After hanging up, she opened the photograph again.
Her father looked tired.
Daniel looked young and sharply dressed.
The third man had been cropped almost completely out of frame.
Only his shoulder remained.
Megan leaned over the papers.
“What are these initials?”
Rachel shook her head.
“Maybe vendors.”
“What about RW?”
“I don’t know.”
But she did recognize something.
The handwriting recording the earliest payment amounts wasn’t her mother’s.
It was her father’s.
Rachel had spent half her childhood sitting at Thomas Mercer’s drafting table doing homework while he marked project bids in that same blocky blue handwriting.
A memory returned.
Her father at the kitchen table late one night in 2011.
Her mother whispering angrily.
Rachel had been twenty-three and home from graduate school.
She remembered only one line.
Helen had said, “You cannot keep paying people this way.”
At the time Rachel assumed they were arguing about company debt.
Now the memory felt different.
Megan interrupted her.
“Rachel.”
She was holding a printed account statement.
“There’s a recurring payment.”
Every month.
Different amounts.
Same recipient.
Redwood Administrative Services.
Rachel searched the name.
Nothing useful appeared.
No familiar website.
No obvious connection to Mercer Millwork.
Daniel had been authorizing those transfers from company accounts for years.
During the last six months, when company cash flow tightened, the payments had begun appearing in their personal finances.
The $46,000 transfer from yesterday had gone to Redwood too.
Rachel felt the story forming in her mind.
Daniel had hidden his relationship with her father.
Daniel had hidden the money.
Daniel had tried to make Rachel and Noah sleep through the night.
And when he returned to the kitchen, he hadn’t checked whether they were alive.
He had looked for the envelope.
Rachel called the company’s controller, Denise Alvarez, a woman who had worked for Mercer Millwork since Rachel was in high school.
“Denise, I need to ask you something.”
“Sure.”
“Have you ever heard of Redwood Administrative Services?”
The pause was almost imperceptible.
Almost.
“Why?”
Rachel closed her eyes.
Because that was not the answer of someone hearing the name for the first time.
“Denise.”
Another pause.
Then:
“Where did you get that name?”
Rachel looked at the photograph.
“From my father.”
Denise’s voice dropped.
“Rachel, don’t talk about this on the phone.”
For the first time since leaving the house, Rachel felt something colder than fear.
Recognition.
Daniel’s secret had existed before their marriage.
Before Noah.
Before Rachel knew there was anything to question.
May you like
She looked at Megan.
“I need a lawyer.”
