Chapter 6: The Last Move She Made
The call came three days later.
I was at home sorting through a drawer of papers — the kind of sorting you do when you need your hands to be occupied so your mind can be quiet — when my attorney, Patricia, rang.
"Clara.
We have a problem."
I set the papers down.
"Tell me."
"Olivia has filed a counter-claim against you.
She's alleging that you induced emotional distress by orchestrating a public confrontation at the ceremony, and that the funds transferred from the wedding account were authorized jointly and cannot be classified as f*audulent."
I sat down slowly.
"On what basis?"
"She has an email.
Sent from your address seven months ago.
It authorizes her as co-administrator of the wedding account with full discretionary spending rights."
"I never sent that email."
"I know.
But it exists, and her attorney — Warren Schultz — is presenting it as evidence that she had your permission to allocate the funds as she saw fit."
Warren Schultz.
Of course.
"Patricia," I said, "I need you to listen carefully.
Seven months ago, I gave Olivia the login credentials to the wedding planning platform.
Not the bank account.
The planning platform.
To manage vendor confirmations."
"Did you put that in writing?"
"I sent her an email with the platform credentials.
Separate from the bank."
"Clara, if that email exists in any form that could be confused with banking authorization —"
"Find it," I said.
"Find the original email.
And then find whoever accessed the bank account to add her as administrator, because it wasn't me."
There was a brief silence.
"You think she added herself."
"I think she found a way.
She was careful about everything else.
She would have been careful about this."
Patricia exhaled slowly.
"This is going to escalate.
Schultz is aggressive and he knows how these proceedings work.
He will try to make this about your emotional state.
Your mental fitness."
I thought about Susan's voice on the phone weeks ago.
She's making it sound like you never recovered.
"I know," I said.
"She's been building that narrative for months."
"Then we need to be faster than she is.
I want every email, every text, every bank statement, every vendor invoice from the past eight months on my desk by tomorrow morning.
I also want the login records from the wedding planning platform.
Those will be timestamped."
"I'll send everything tonight."
"One more thing." Patricia paused.
"Is Michael willing to provide a statement?"
I looked at the velvet box sitting on the corner of my kitchen table, where it had been since the day Michael handed it back to me.
"I'll ask him," I said.
---
Michael's response, when I called him that evening, was immediate.
"Yes," he said.
"Whatever you need."
"It may become complicated for you as well.
Schultz will try to —"
"Mom." His voice was steady.
"Whatever you need.
I mean it."
I spent the rest of the evening at the kitchen table with every document I possessed spread across the surface.
Bank statements.
Vendor emails.
The original wedding planning platform confirmation.
My own sent emails, printed page by page.
At eleven o'clock, I found what I was looking for.
The email authorizing Olivia as co-administrator of the wedding bank account had been sent from my address.
But it had been sent at two-seventeen in the morning.
I did not send emails at two-seventeen in the morning.
I called Patricia immediately.
"The timestamp," I said.
"Two-seventeen a.m.
in March.
I was in bed.
I have a sleep tracker.
It records my activity and the data syncs to my phone.
I can prove I was asleep."
A pause.
"Clara, that's extraordinary."
"She had my email password.
I gave it to her in January to help manage vendor correspondence.
She sent the email herself."
"Can you prove you didn't simply wake briefly and send it?"
"The sleep tracker shows continuous rest from ten p.m.
to six forty-five a.m.
that night.
No interruptions."
Patricia was quiet for a moment.
"That's good.
That's very good.
But Clara — she will have anticipated some of this.
Schultz doesn't file claims he thinks he'll lose.
There's something else.
Something we haven't found yet."
I looked at the papers spread across my table.
"Then we keep looking," I said.
I was still at the table at one in the morning when my phone lit up with a message from a number I didn't recognize.
It was a photograph.
Olivia standing outside my house.
Not today.
The leaves on the tree at the end of my path were the amber of late October — months ago, long before the wedding.
She was looking at the front door with an expression I couldn't name precisely, but which made the back of my neck go cold.
Beneath the photograph, a single line of text.
*She came three times.
I thought you should know who sent it.*
I didn't recognize the number.
I stared at the message for a long time.
Then I forwarded it to Patricia and sat very still in my kitchen.
May you like
Someone had been watching Olivia.
And they had chosen this moment to tell me.
