Chapter 5 - HER FATHER’S NAME, SOMEONE ELSE’S ADDRESS
Maya read the invoice twice.
“This changes the question.”
Emma sat beside her in a quiet room the venue normally used for bridesmaids.
Susan had gone downstairs to tell immediate family members the wedding was postponed indefinitely.
“What question?”
“Not whether your father received money.”
Maya tapped the address.
“Whether D. Brooks Consulting was actually his.”
The invoice was for $84,000 in “site coordination services.”
Emma knew her father’s work.
Daniel Brooks had been a salaried superintendent. He did not send invoices to his employer for site coordination.
The document carried his typed name.
No signature.
The tax identification field was partly redacted in the archived scan.
Emma called her office manager, Rachel.
“Where did this come from?”
Rachel explained that Grant had asked for old files relating to the Ridgeview Commons project, a mixed-use development outside Richmond completed three years earlier.
Brooks Studio had consulted on interior layouts.
Daniel had supervised construction for Hale Development.
The invoice had been inside a digital folder Grant claimed Emma’s firm needed to retain.
“Did he say why?”
“He said there might be an audit.”
“When?”
“About five weeks ago.”
Five weeks.
Before Grant had mentioned a prenup.
Before Maya.
Before the wedding crisis.
Emma remembered something else.
Grant had started asking odd questions around the same time.
Did she still have her father’s old laptop?
Had Susan finished sorting his files?
Was Daniel’s accountant still practicing?
Emma had interpreted the questions as concern.
Now they looked like inventory.
Susan returned twenty minutes later.
Emma showed her the invoice.
Her mother stared at the address.
“That isn’t right.”
“You’re sure?”
“Daniel worked from home sometimes, but he never had an office there.”
“Did you ever file taxes for D. Brooks Consulting?”
“No.”
“Did Dad?”
“I would’ve seen it.”
Maya leaned forward.
“Susan, when Grant said he helped make things disappear after Daniel died, what exactly did he tell you?”
Susan swallowed.
“That Daniel had taken company money.”
“Did he show you proof?”
“Spreadsheets. Transfers.”
“Anything signed?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you have your own lawyer?”
Susan shook her head.
“Grant said lawyers would make it worse.”
Emma looked toward the window.
That sounded like him.
Susan continued.
“He said if Hale Development formally pursued it, they could make a claim against Daniel’s estate. The house might be involved. He said his father was furious.”
Thomas Hale.
Grant’s father.
A man who had hugged Emma at Daniel’s funeral and told her Daniel had been “family.”
Emma felt something cold settle inside her.
“What did Grant ask you to do?”
Susan’s voice became smaller.
“Nothing at first.”
“And later?”
“He asked me not to tell you.”
“That’s all?”
Susan looked down.
Emma knew.
“Mom.”
“I signed something.”
Maya straightened.
“What?”
“I don’t know. An acknowledgment. Grant said it confirmed I understood the company wasn’t pursuing the estate.”
“When?”
“Two weeks after the funeral.”
“Do you have a copy?”
“No.”
Emma’s anger shifted direction.
“You signed a document you didn’t read?”
“I had just buried my husband.”
“And you let Grant use it for eighteen months?”
Susan recoiled.
“I thought he was protecting us.”
Emma stared at her mother.
So had she.
Maya quietly closed the blue folder.
“Emma, I want the entire chain before we accuse anyone of anything.”
“What chain?”
“Every payment. Every invoice. Every account.”
Emma nodded.
Maya glanced toward Susan.
“And whatever she signed.”
Susan’s face tightened.
“There’s one more thing.”
Emma waited.
Susan looked at the canceled wedding dress hanging from the closet door.
May you like
“Grant wasn’t the first Hale who asked me to keep quiet.”
Thomas Hale had come to see her the morning after Daniel died.
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