Chapter 6 - Six Months Before Heather
When I asked Mark about Randall, he went quiet in the familiar way he used to when our marriage was failing.
Not angry silence.
Not thoughtful silence.
The silence of a man deciding which facts I could handle.
"He helped me with a business proposal," Mark finally admitted.
I set my phone on the counter.
"What business?"
"A small packaging distribution company. I thought I could leave the plant someday."
"You never told me."
"You would've said it was too risky."
"Were you still married to me?"
He exhaled.
"Yes."
I'd spent the last three years convincing myself the old arguments no longer mattered.
But the past had a way of entering the room wearing new clothes.
Mark said Randall had approached him at a business networking event and offered advice on financing.
The venture had never opened.
Mark claimed he had abandoned it after recognizing how much debt he'd need to assume.
"And then you met Heather," I said.
"Months later. At a friend's cookout."
"Was Randall there?"
"Not that I remember."
I let the silence stretch.
"Think harder."
He promised to search his old calendar and emails.
That night, I found a photograph from the cookout on an inactive social media page.
Mark stood behind Heather, both smiling at the camera.
In the background, beside a cooler, was Randall Pierce.
It might have been coincidence.
Yet coincidence was becoming a very expensive explanation.
Claire warned me not to make claims I couldn't prove.
"Let records establish the relationship," she said. "Suspicion makes a good question and a terrible affidavit."
I gave her the photograph.
Meanwhile, Grace's school called about a problem with lunch.
Grace had hidden two milk cartons in her backpack.
Her teacher worried they would spoil.
I drove to school and found Grace sitting beside the counselor with her eyes lowered.
"I wasn't stealing," she whispered.
"I know."
"I thought Eli might need them."
I wanted to hold her until she forgot every empty dinner plate.
Instead I sat beside her, explained that she could get help without hiding food, and arranged for the counselor to support both children at school.
When we reached home, Eli was building a tower of blocks with my mother.
He looked up and asked whether Grace was in trouble.
"No," I said, and meant it.
For days, every reassurance seemed to run against a wall of things Heather had taught them.
That evening, my attorney called with an update.
The financial institution had identified an unauthorized access attempt through a third-party document portal.
No funds had been released because of the pending review.
That should have been the good news of the day.
Then Claire said the access history included a login connected to Mark's old business email.
I asked Mark whether Heather had that password.
"She might," he admitted.
"Might?"
"It's on our home computer."
His carelessness felt like another betrayal, even if it wasn't a crime.
Before we finished talking, my phone buzzed with a photograph from the unknown number.
A signed loan application lay on a desk.
In the box marked collateral description were four words.
EXPECTED FAMILY TRUST DISTRIBUTION.
Mark's name appeared at the bottom.
May you like
And this time the date was from two years earlier, when we were still married.
