“No.”
“I still had the key you gave me for watering plants when you traveled.”
I had forgotten.
“I went into his office.”
“The case was in a drawer.”
“What was inside?”
“Cash.”
“Company invoices.”
“Bank account numbers.”
“Copies of signatures.”
“And a notebook.”
He slid it toward me.
Thomas’s handwriting.
Numbers filled the pages.
Names of companies.
Payments.
Noah said:
“I didn’t understand everything.”
“But I understood enough to know the companies looked fake.”
“My accounting professor later confirmed it.”
“Later?”
Noah nodded.
“That night, Thomas caught me.”
I stared.
“He knew?”
“Yes.”
“He closed the office door.”
Noah’s voice changed.
“He told me I had two choices.”
“Put everything back and forget it.”
“Or leave Bellmere and never contact you again.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“Thomas would never—”
Then stopped.
I had spent twenty years using that sentence.
Thomas would never.
Noah reached into the case.
He placed a small recorder on the table.
“I was eighteen.”
“I was terrified.”
“But I had started recording lectures on this because I had trouble taking notes fast enough.”
“When Thomas caught me, it was still running in my jacket.”
He pressed play.
Static.
Then Thomas’s voice.
Older.
Sharper than I remembered.
You have no idea what you found.
Noah’s younger voice:
Then tell me.
Thomas:
You leave tomorrow.
You go to school.
You never come back here.
Noah:
I’m telling Mrs. Bennett.
Thomas laughed.
Tell Eleanor what? That the boy she practically adopted broke into my office and stole financial records?
Noah:
I didn’t steal anything.
Thomas:
The police will find her jewelry in your luggage.
My entire body went cold.
Noah stopped the recording.
I could not speak.
He continued.
“I didn’t know what he meant.”
“Then Thomas opened the bottom drawer.”
“He had already taken your jewelry.”
“Why?”
“To frame me if necessary.”
I covered my mouth.
“No.”
“He said if I contacted you, he would report everything stolen and tell police I had taken cash too.”
“You were eighteen.”
“I knew nobody would believe me over him.”
“He was respected.”
“I was the poor kid across the street.”
“He knew exactly how that looked.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“But the jewelry disappeared before police came.”
“Thomas made sure it did.”
Noah looked toward the envelopes.
“He also told me you would choose him.”
“I said you wouldn’t.”
“He said I didn’t understand marriage.”
My hands shook.
“Why didn’t you come to me anyway?”
“I tried.”
He pushed the envelopes toward me.
Every one had my name.
Eleanor Bennett.
Cedarbrook Lane.
Some returned.
Some unopened.
Some stamped address unknown, though I had lived at the same address.
“I wrote from school.”
“Every week at first.”
“Then every month.”
“Thomas intercepted them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know every time.”
“He controlled the mail whenever he was home.”
“He also contacted the post office about temporary forwarding more than once.”
I stared.
“I never knew.”
“I called too.”
“What happened?”
“Thomas answered twice.”
Noah swallowed.
“The second time he told me you knew everything.”
“He said you were disgusted.”
“I believed him.”
I whispered:
“Oh, Noah.”
He looked away.
“I was eighteen.”
“Then nineteen.”
“Then twenty.”
“Every year I waited longer, coming back felt harder.”
“And the financial records?”
“I took photographs before Thomas forced me out.”
“The original case stayed with him.”
“How do you have it?”
“I got it after he died.”
I stared.
“How?”
“Storage auction.”
The words sounded impossible.
Noah explained.
Thomas had rented a storage unit in another name.
After his death, payments stopped.
The contents were eventually scheduled for auction.
Noah had spent years monitoring property and business records connected to Thomas.
He discovered it.
Purchased the unit through an intermediary.
Inside was the metal case.
My jewelry.
Ledgers.
Old company records.
And more.
“What exactly was Thomas doing?”
Noah opened another folder.
For more than fifteen years, Thomas had been diverting money from a regional manufacturing company where he served as financial controller.
Not dramatic theft.
Not one huge transfer.
Fake maintenance vendors.
Inflated consulting contracts.
Payments to companies controlled through nominees.
Small amounts became large amounts.
Hundreds of thousands.
Then more than a million over time.
“Why wasn’t he caught?”
“He almost was.”
Noah showed me an internal audit from twenty-one years earlier.
The year he left Bellmere.
Auditors had begun asking questions.
Thomas feared Noah had seen the records.
So he created a thief.
Not only for me.
Possibly for the company.
“If the case disappeared,” Noah said, “Thomas could claim someone had stolen sensitive documents and cash.”
“And you were convenient.”
“Yes.”
My throat burned.
“I defended him.”
Noah said nothing.
“For twenty years.”
Still nothing.
“I believed you took from me.”
