Chapter 16 - EMILY CAME HOME EARLY
Emily and Nathan returned from their honeymoon three days early.
I was furious.
Not truly furious.
Mother furious.
The kind built from worry.
“You had four more days.”
Emily dropped her suitcase in my hallway.
“We can travel again.”
“You only get one honeymoon.”
Nathan walked in behind her.
“With respect, I’m planning on staying married long enough for several.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Emily hugged me.
Then she whispered.
“I needed to see you.”
I held her.
“You should not have come home because of me.”
“We didn’t.”
Nathan lifted two suitcases.
“We came home because your daughter checked her father’s company records from a hotel balcony in Florence.”
I stared at her.
“Emily.”
“What?”
“You were supposed to be drinking wine.”
“I did both.”
She pulled out her laptop.
“There’s something you need to see.”
We sat at the dining table.
Emily opened a folder.
Nathan stood behind her.
“Do you remember the wedding vendor called Hartwell Events?”
“Yes.”
“They handled the custom lighting.”
“Why?”
“Because they refunded us $8,700 after the final invoice adjustment.”
I nodded.
“That refund went back to the wedding account.”
“No.”
“It didn’t.”
I looked at the screen.
Emily had noticed because she was reviewing final vendor receipts for tax and insurance documentation.
The refund had been redirected.
Not to our wedding account.
To another account ending in 8841.
The same account David used for his wedding deposit.
“How did they redirect it?”
Emily pulled up an email.
A message from David to the vendor.
Please return all excess funds to the original funding account.
He had attached instructions.
My chest tightened.
Nathan said.
“That looked weird.”
“So we called the vendor.”
“You called them from your honeymoon?”
Emily ignored me.
“They said Dad contacted three vendors and requested refunds or credits after the wedding.”
I stared.
“After he left the reception?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
“How much?”
“So far, about twenty-one thousand.”
I felt something inside me break.
Not because of the amount.
Because of the timing.
While I had been sitting in a hotel room after watching my daughter throw her father out of her wedding, David had apparently been trying to pull money back from the celebration.
Nathan sat across from me.
“There’s more.”
Of course there was.
He showed me an email sent from David’s company address.
The timestamp was 11:48 p.m. on the wedding night.
The subject line.
EVENT CANCELLATION ADJUSTMENTS.
Inside, David instructed an assistant to recover any refundable deposits connected to “the Mercer event.”
The Mercer event.
Not Emily’s wedding.
Not his daughter’s wedding.
An event.
Emily looked at me.
“I think he was angry.”
“Yes.”
“And he wanted to punish us.”
“Yes.”
She looked devastated.
Nathan took her hand.
I reached across the table.
“Sweetheart.”
“He always loved me.”
“I believe he does.”
“How can someone love you and do this?”
There are questions mothers want to answer.
Then there are questions we cannot.
“I think some people love others only when love does not interfere with what they want.”
Emily started crying.
“I don’t want to become like him.”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re asking.”
She looked at me.
I continued.
“Your father never asks whether he is hurting people.”
“He asks why they are making his life difficult by being hurt.”
Nathan looked down.
Emily wiped her face.
Then she opened one more file.
“I found this too.”
It was an email chain.
David.
Peter Wallace.
Rebecca Collins.
The subject line.
MERCER FAMILY ASSET REALIGNMENT.
The first email had been sent nine months earlier.
Three months before I discovered the affair.
The final line was from David.
May you like
Complete the transfers before Emily’s wedding.
After that, I’ll handle Margaret.
