Chapter 2 - A Photograph Taken Yesterday
The guard did not raise his voice.
He simply held my photograph at the level of the glass, waiting for me to lower the window.
I stared at the picture.
It showed me leaving the grocery store the previous afternoon, carrying a paper bag beneath one arm.
Someone had photographed me from across the parking lot.
“Who gave you that?” I asked.
“I'm supposed to invite you inside.”
“On whose instructions?”
He looked miserable.
“I don't know the full situation.”
I drove away before he could say another word.
At the first red light, I called my closest friend, Naomi Price.
Naomi was a civil attorney, the kind who asked questions before offering comfort.
“Don't go home yet,” she said after I explained.
“Why?”
“Because your husband knows you're onto him, and somebody photographed you yesterday.”
I met her in the back booth of a diner twenty minutes later.
She examined the photograph I had taken through my windshield.
Mara's face was unmistakable.
“Why didn't you tell me you wrote that letter?” Naomi asked.
“Because the letter wasn't just for her.”
I swallowed.
“There was a copy of a bank transfer inside.”
Naomi set down her coffee.
“Whose transfer?”
“My father's.”
Dad had died eight months earlier, leaving us a modest house, his woodworking tools, and an estate everyone called uncomplicated.
But I had found an account statement tucked behind a framed family portrait.
The statement showed that money had been sent from Dad's business to an account under Eliam's name.
The total was eighty-four thousand dollars.
Eliam told me the payment was an old loan Dad had repaid.
I had wanted to believe him.
Mara had accused him of forging documents years earlier, and I had dismissed her as bitter.
The second page of my letter admitted I no longer believed my husband.
Naomi leaned forward.
“You must understand something.”
“What?”
“If Eliam stole that letter, he may know exactly how much evidence you have.”
My phone flashed with a new text from an unknown number.
WE CAN EXPLAIN THE PHOTOGRAPH.
Then another arrived.
May you like
BUT FIRST, ASK YOUR HUSBAND WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FATHER ON NOVEMBER FOURTH.
