Chapter 5: The Things He Left Behind
I drove my mother home that evening with a follow-up appointment card in my purse and a surgery date circled in red pen: eleven days away.
She fell asleep in the passenger seat before we crossed the bridge.
Her head tipped toward the window, her hands loose in her lap.
She looked smaller than she used to.
Or maybe I had just stopped pretending not to notice.
I carried her cardigan inside.
Made her tea.
Sat at her kitchen table — the same table where Richard had once placed an envelope of cash in front of a frightened, grieving woman — and I tried to think clearly.
My phone had forty-one missed calls.
Fourteen from Richard's personal number.
Nine from a number I didn't recognize, which I later learned was his attorney.
The rest were from our shared financial advisor, our realtor, and two calls from Richard's mother, Patricia, who had never once in eleven years called me first.
I didn't return any of them.
What I did instead was call my own attorney.
A woman named Claudia Reyes who had handled my father's estate and who had told me once, quietly, over coffee, that if I ever needed her for anything else, I should not hesitate.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Claudia.
It's Maya.
I need to talk to you about my husband."
A pause.
"Are you safe?"
"Yes.
My mother is with me."
"Tell me what happened."
I told her everything.
The clinic.
The scan.
The agents.
The capsule.
The four million dollars.
The fraudulent consent form.
The eight years.
She listened without interrupting, and when I finished, she was quiet for three seconds.
"Maya, do not go back to that house tonight."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Do not touch any joint accounts.
Do not move money.
Do not send emails from any account he has access to.
Can you stay with your mother?"
"Yes."
"Good.
I'll file for an emergency protective order tomorrow morning.
Given what the federal agents have, his assets will likely be frozen within forty-eight hours.
But I want our paperwork in before that happens so your interests are clearly separated."
I looked around my mother's kitchen.
The St.
Jude candle on the windowsill.
The pot on the stove.
The worn linoleum floor I had helped her mop a hundred times.
"He told her it would dissolve," I said.
"He told her it was standard."
"I know." Claudia's voice was careful and steady.
"That's going to matter a great deal in what comes next."
After I hung up, I sat in the quiet for a long time.
Then I heard my mother's slippers on the floor behind me.
"You called a lawyer?" she asked.
"Yes."
She sat down across from me.
Reached into the pocket of her cardigan and placed something on the table between us.
A folded piece of paper.
Old.
The crease lines had gone soft with age.
"I kept a copy," she said.
"Of what he had me sign.
I didn't understand it at the time, but I kept it because something felt wrong.
I've had it in my Bible for eight years."
I unfolded it slowly.
It was a two-page document on Veridian Biosciences letterhead.
At the bottom, in the signature line designated for the company's authorized representative, was a name.
Not a Veridian executive.
Richard Allen Harmon.
He hadn't been a middleman.
He hadn't been a recruiter passing her along to someone else.
He had been the authorized representative himself.
My mother watched my face as I read it.
"I didn't understand what it meant," she said.
"Not until today."
I folded the paper carefully and placed it in my own pocket.
"It means," I said, "that he can't claim he was just following orders."
My mother wrapped both hands around her tea mug.
Outside, a mockingbird started up in the bougainvillea — loud and insistent, the way they always are at dusk.
"Will they put him in prison?" she asked.
I thought about the two agents.
The tablet.
The four million dollars.
The fraudulent consent form with his signature at the bottom.
"I think that's very likely," I said.
She nodded slowly.
Took a sip of tea.
"Good," she said quietly.
And that was all.
But when I reached for my phone to send the document photo to Claudia, I noticed something I had missed the first time.
A third page, still folded behind the other two.
A list of names.
Twelve names.
May you like
Twelve other women.
All of them, like my mother, listed as storage hosts.
