Chapter 5: What Diane Found in Three Hours
Diane arrived at 7:15 p.m.
with a bag of groceries, her laptop, and her husband Greg's name on her lips before she was through the door.
"Greg knows a forensic accountant," she said, setting the bag on the kitchen counter without looking at me.
"I already texted him.
He said she can do a preliminary review by Tuesday."
"Diane—"
"Don't tell me it's too much." She turned around.
Her eyes went straight to the bruise on Chloe's cheek.
Chloe was on my hip, still drowsy, her ragdoll tucked under one arm.
Diane pressed her lips together for a moment.
Then she reached out and very gently touched Chloe's hair.
"Hi, baby girl," she said softly.
"Hi," Chloe said.
Diane straightened up.
Her expression had shifted into something I recognized from when we were teenagers — the look she got right before she became completely immovable.
"Show me the emails," she said.
We sat at the kitchen table while David's voice and Margaret's voice moved occasionally through the ceiling above us.
I had the document open on my laptop.
Diane read through it twice without speaking.
"Phillip Sterling," she said finally.
"Sterling is David's father's name?"
"Yes."
"So this is a blood relative David has never once mentioned to you in four years of marriage."
"Not once."
She tapped the screen.
"This line.
*She's asking too many questions about the business account.* What business account?"
"David has a separate LLC.
He set it up two years ago.
He said it was for consulting work — overflow from his main job.
I'm not on it."
"Are you on the main accounts?"
"Joint checking and savings, yes.
The LLC is his alone."
Diane sat back.
"Rachel.
Forty-two thousand dollars is not a vendor deposit.
That's a transfer.
And if he's moving money out of a marital asset account into a private LLC and then somewhere else—" She stopped.
"That's not a vendor deposit."
"I know."
"How long has this been going on?"
"I don't know.
That's the only transfer I caught.
I wasn't looking before."
She was quiet for a moment.
Upstairs, a door opened and closed.
"You need a lawyer," she said.
"Not eventually.
Tomorrow morning."
"He told me to reinstate the insurance policy by tomorrow or things would get difficult."
Diane looked at me.
"He threatened you."
"He said it would get difficult."
"That's a threat, Rachel." She closed the laptop.
"He hurt Chloe through his mother, he dismissed it on the phone, he came home and threatened you, and now he's upstairs strategizing with the woman who str*ck your daughter." She put her hand on mine.
"You are not overreacting.
You are under-reacting.
You need to move faster than he expects."
I looked at her hand on mine.
"I'm scared," I said.
It was the first time I'd said it out loud.
"I know." She didn't tell me not to be.
"But you have the emails.
You have the photographs of Chloe's face.
You have the insurance cancellation on record with a timestamp.
And you have me." She squeezed my hand once.
"That's more than he thinks you have."
Upstairs, Margaret laughed at something.
The sound drifted down through the ceiling like smoke.
Diane looked up at it.
Then back at me.
"Does she know you have the emails?"
"No."
"Good," Diane said.
"Don't tell David either.
Not yet." She opened her own laptop.
"I'm going to start looking for Phillip Sterling tonight.
Three hours.
Let's see what comes up."
What came up, two hours and forty minutes later, made us both go silent.
Phillip Sterling was not a distant cousin keeping in touch with an elderly aunt.
He was a licensed real estate attorney.
And six months ago, he had filed paperwork on a property — a property listed under a trust name I had never seen, but which contained, buried in the filing documents Diane pulled from the county recorder's website, the name David A.
Sterling as the sole beneficiary.
A house.
A real house, fully purchased, in a town three states away.
David had bought a house.
Without me.
Without my name.
Without a single word.
I stared at the address on the screen.
Diane typed it into a map.
The satellite image loaded — a two-story colonial on a quiet street, a car in the driveway.
A red sedan.
I didn't own a red sedan.
Margaret didn't own a red sedan.
Diane zoomed in as far as the image would go.
The car had a parking sticker on the rear windshield.
She enlarged it.
A hospital logo.
And below it, a name in small print.
May you like
Not Sterling.
A different name entirely.
