Chapter 4 — THE OTHER ACCOUNT

We had four accounts.

Joint checking. Joint savings. My work account, which is really just where the direct deposit lands before it moves. And Josie's account, which my mother opened for her when she was born and which we had both put money in twice a year since.

I opened joint checking first.

Balance: $412.

I sat there and looked at it.

We are not rich people. But we are the kind of boring that comes from two incomes and a mortgage we did not stretch for. Joint checking sits at four to six thousand from the fifteenth of the month.

I scrolled.

The withdrawals started on March 6.

Which is the month I took her off the camera account.

I noticed that immediately and then made myself set it aside, because I was going to spend the next hour being an investigator, and investigators who fall in love with the first pattern they see stop finding the second one.

March 6: $2,000.

March 9: $2,000.

March 14: $1,800.

All of them electronic transfers to an account ending in 4471.

Not cash. Not Venmo. Transfers.

Whoever set this up wanted it to look like a bill being paid.

April was worse.

May had a $9,000 in it, which is under the reporting threshold by a margin that is not accidental.

I went through six months and wrote every line on a legal pad, because I did not trust myself to read a screen and hold the total at the same time.

Then I added it up.

$412,000 is what the mortgage on our house was not.

The number on my pad was $118,400.

Savings was empty.

Actually empty. Not low. $0.00, with a transfer out on August 29 that closed it down to nothing, which is a thing banks let you do if you do not formally close the account.

Then I opened Josie's.

I want to describe this part carefully because I have been asked about it by three lawyers and each one of them wanted a different level of detail.

Josie's account had $6,200 in it in February.

It had $1,100 in it in September.

The withdrawals were smaller. Four hundred here, six hundred there, always to the same 4471.

My mother put money in that account every Christmas and every birthday.

My mother is seventy-four and lives on a fixed income in Greensboro and she puts a hundred and fifty dollars in her granddaughter's savings account twice a year.

I sat in my kitchen at 7:15 in the morning and looked at a spreadsheet of my mother's Christmas money going out in six-hundred-dollar increments to an account number I did not recognize.

And that — not the red dress, not the hand on her waist, not "he doesn't notice people" — that is the moment I stopped being a man whose marriage was in trouble and became something else.

I called my boss at 7:40.

Wes Trumbo has run Carolina Integrated Systems for nineteen years and he answers his phone on the first ring at all hours, which is either admirable or a symptom.

"You're supposed to be in a ceiling."

"I need the week."

There was a pause.

"What happened?"

I told him. Not all of it. Enough.

He was quiet for a second.

"Bring me the drive."

"What?"

"You're going to want a copy somewhere that isn't your house and isn't your truck. Bring it here. I'll put it in the safe and I'll write down the date and time I received it and I'll sign it."

I had not thought of that.

That is the moment I found out that Wes Trumbo, who I had worked for for eleven years and had never once had a personal conversation with, had been through something.

He never told me what.

I never asked.

At 8:05 my phone rang.

JUDITH.

I let it go.

At 8:11 it rang again.

I let that go too.

At 8:16 she texted.

Daniel, call me. There has been a misunderstanding and I want to explain before anyone says something they can't take back.

Then, four minutes later:

Also please don't discuss this with Corinne's work.

I read that second message about nine times.

I had not said anything to anyone about Corinne's work.

I had not mentioned Grant Mercer to the nurse, to the deputy, or to Wes.

Nobody had told Judith Vance that Grant Mercer was on a recording.

Which meant Judith Vance already knew he was in my house.

I set the phone down on the island next to the crayon.

Upstairs, my son started crying, and my daughter's bedroom door opened before mine did, and I got to the hallway in time to stop her.

"I've got him."

"I can do it."

"I know you can," I said. "That's the problem."