Chapter 6 - The Son Turns Against His Mother
Nathan did not speak for nearly a minute.
He stared at the photograph, then lifted his eyes toward Christopher.
“What am I looking at?”
“Your father, three weeks before he died.”
“I know who my father is.”
“Then ask your mother why she told the police she was home that night.”
Olivia felt the world tilt beneath her.
“Christopher, stop.”
But he continued.
“The car in this photograph belonged to Margaret. She was seen leaving your father's office shortly before midnight.”
Nathan's face hardened.
“Are you accusing my mother of killing my father?”
“I'm telling you to ask questions.”
“That's not an answer.”
“It's the only one I have.”
Nathan shoved the photograph back into the envelope.
“You don't get to walk into my life and make accusations because you need something from my family.”
Christopher's jaw tightened.
“I'm not the one who needs something.”
He turned to Olivia.
“Tell him.”
She could barely breathe.
“Tell me what?” Nathan demanded.
Olivia looked at the man she loved.
She had one chance to stop the damage.
She could tell him that Christopher had diverted the money, that she had discovered the scheme, and that she had been too frightened to expose her brother.
Instead, she said, “I don't know what he's talking about.”
The lie came out quietly.
But Nathan heard it.
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he turned and walked away.
That evening, Nathan confronted Margaret in the library of the Whitmore residence.
She was reading a financial report when he entered.
“Did you see Dad the night he died?”
Margaret slowly removed her glasses.
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because you were seventeen, and the circumstances surrounding his death were painful.”
“Were you with him that night?”
“Yes.”
Nathan placed the photograph on her desk.
“Then why does Christopher Sterling have this?”
Margaret looked at it.
For a moment, she seemed to age before his eyes.
“Where did you get that?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Did you lie to the police?”
Margaret stood.
“Your father called me that night. He was frightened. He believed someone had been stealing from the company, and he wanted to tell me what he'd discovered.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn't say over the phone.”
Nathan's voice rose.
“So you met him?”
“Yes.”
“And afterward?”
“I went home.”
“Then why did you say you were home all evening?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Because by the time the police questioned me, the investigation had become complicated. I had been advised not to discuss the meeting until the lawyers could establish what happened.”
“By whom?”
“Daniel Brooks.”
Nathan stepped back.
“You let me believe Dad died without any secrets.”
“I wanted you to remember the father you loved, not the frightened man he became during his final weeks.”
“That's not your decision to make!”
His voice cracked.
Margaret flinched.
For eleven years, she had carried the weight of that night alone. She had believed silence would protect Nathan from the ugliest parts of his father's final months.
Now she watched her son look at her as though she were a stranger.
“I never harmed your father,” she said.
“Then prove it.”
“I will.”
“Not tomorrow. Not after the wedding. Now.”
Margaret picked up the telephone.
“Daniel, I need you at the house.”
Within an hour, Daniel arrived with a second folder.
He placed it on the desk.
“Your father discovered an unauthorized transfer of company assets,” he told Nathan. “He believed the money was being moved through a private investment partnership. He was preparing to report it.”
“Who was responsible?”
“We never established that conclusively.”
Nathan opened the folder.
Inside were copies of bank statements, handwritten notes, and a police report.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Thomas Sterling.
Olivia's father.
Nathan looked up slowly.
“Why was Olivia's father involved?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Thomas was employed by a financial services company that managed several Whitmore accounts. He was a person of interest in the investigation.”
“Was he responsible?”
“We couldn't prove it.”
Nathan thought of Olivia's father, a man who had died in a car accident when she was a child.
He thought of Christopher's accusations.
And he thought of Olivia telling him she knew nothing.
“Does Olivia know about this?”
Margaret answered carefully.
“I don't know.”
Nathan closed the folder.
For the first time, he wondered whether his fiancée had approached him because she loved him or because she had been searching for the truth about her father.
Perhaps both.
Perhaps neither.
He left the library without another word.
The next morning, he asked Olivia to meet him at a quiet café near the lake.
She arrived wearing no makeup, her eyes swollen from crying.
Nathan placed a copy of the financial transfers on the table.
“Did you know about these?”
She stared at the papers.
Then she nodded.
“How long?”
“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks?”
“I found out Christopher had moved money through his company. I didn't know where it came from at first.”
“But you knew before the wedding.”
“Yes.”
Nathan looked away.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I was trying to fix it.”
“By marrying me?”
“No.”
“Then what were you trying to fix?”
Olivia reached for his hand.
He pulled away.
She began to cry.
“I love you.”
Nathan's expression broke for a second, but he forced himself to remain still.
“I believe you might,” he said. “But I don't know whether you love me enough to tell me the truth.”
She opened her handbag and removed Robert's handwritten note.
“There is something else.”
Nathan read it.
When he reached the final sentence, his eyes widened.
“Where did you get this?”
“My mother kept it for eleven years.”
He stared at her.
“Why?”
“Because she believes your father discovered something that could destroy the people responsible for what happened to him.”
Nathan rose slowly.
“Then we're going to find out who they were.”
For the first time, Olivia thought they might still have a future.
Then Nathan added, “But the wedding is postponed.”
He walked out before she could answer.
And when Olivia looked down at the table, she noticed something written in tiny letters on the back of the photograph Christopher had given them.
A file number.
One that matched the number on Robert's sealed legal documents.
The file had never disappeared.
May you like
Someone had been keeping it.
And that person had been inside the Whitmore family all along.
