Chapter 5: What Dean Found
Carol met me at her front door with hot tea and no questions.
That was why we had been friends for thirty-four years.
I sat at her kitchen table while Vermont settled into full dark outside.
She refilled my cup twice without asking.
When I finally told her everything, she listened without interrupting, which was more than most people could manage.
"How much do you actually know about this Marcus?" she asked when I finished.
"Nothing," I said.
"Only the name."
"And Dean found something?"
"He said he'd call tonight."
She looked at the clock on the wall.
It was nearly nine.
My phone rang at nine-fourteen.
"Mom." Dean's voice was tight.
"Are you sitting down?"
"Yes."
"I went through Priscilla's desk.
I know I shouldn't have.
But after you left she locked herself in the bedroom and I needed to understand what was happening."
I waited.
"There's a folder," he said.
"Letters.
Printed emails.
And a document."
"What kind of document?"
"A loan agreement," he said.
"Between Priscilla and Marcus Hale.
Dated twenty-two months ago.
Mom, the interest rate on this thing is criminal.
She borrowed nine thousand dollars and by the terms of this agreement she now owes him over thirty."
Thirty thousand dollars.
"She's been paying him off," I said slowly.
"With my card."
"She paid him eleven thousand, four hundred over fourteen months," Dean said.
"At the rate in this document, she's barely touched the principal."
I set my cup down on Carol's table.
"Dean," I said carefully.
"Who is Marcus Hale?"
A pause.
"I looked him up," he said.
"He's not a contractor, Mom.
He has a registered business but it's thin.
Three years old.
One address that turns out to be a mail service.
I found two other names connected to the business filing.
I'm sending you a screenshot."
The image came through a moment later.
A business registration.
Two names listed as co-founders alongside Marcus Hale.
I read the second name three times.
"Dean," I said.
"Do you know who this is?"
"I know," he said.
The second name on that document was someone I recognized.
Not because I had ever met him, but because I had seen his name signed on something else entirely.
My husband Robert's life insurance policy.
Filed twenty-three years ago.
Robert had been gone for twenty-one years.
I had collected that policy and used it carefully: Dean's college, a portion of this house, a small savings account I had never touched.
The second name on Marcus Hale's business registration was the name of the insurance broker who had handled Robert's policy.
A man I had not thought about in over two decades.
"Mom," Dean said.
"Are you still there?"
"I'm here."
"What does this mean?"
"I don't know yet," I said.
But my hands had gone cold, and Carol was watching my face from across the table with an expression that told me she could see something had shifted.
I looked at the screenshot again.
The business address.
The filing date.
Three years ago, right around the time Priscilla had first appeared in Dean's life.
"Dean," I said.
"How did you meet Priscilla?"
Silence.
Then: "She was introduced to me.
By a colleague."
"Which colleague?"
Another silence.
May you like
Longer.
"I'll call you back," he said.
