Chapter 5: What Patricia Holt Knew
Patricia Holt's office was on the fourth floor of a building downtown, and she was already waiting when Zoria and I arrived the next morning.
She was in her sixties, compact, with reading glasses pushed up on her head and a yellow legal pad on the desk in front of her.
She had the manner of someone who had heard a great many terrible things and had not been destroyed by any of them.
"Sit down," she said.
"Both of you."
We sat.
"I need to tell you something before we begin," she said.
"I was at that party because my nephew is friends with one of your neighbors.
I had no idea whose house I was at until your daughter started screaming." She looked at Zoria without apology.
"I'm glad she did."
Zoria gave a short, humorless sound that was almost a laugh.
"I've already spoken to the university's legal office this morning," Patricia said.
"Off the record, as a courtesy.
The admissions officer — his name is Gareth Moore — filed an internal report last night.
The university is treating this as document fraud.
That's a serious classification."
"What does that mean for my wife?" I asked.
"Potentially criminal exposure, depending on what the investigation finds.
Document fraud, identity fraud, and depending on the value of the grant — which we know is forty thousand dollars — possible felony charges." She wrote something on her pad.
"That's the university's track.
Separately, you have a civil matter.
The grant money that was voided.
Zoria's lost academic year, if she chooses to pursue that.
And depending on your marital property situation, there may be additional financial issues we need to look at."
"She has her own money," I said.
"From before we married.
A trust."
Patricia looked up.
"Has she ever had access to any accounts in Zoria's name?
College savings, custodial accounts, anything like that?"
I felt something cold move through me.
"There's a college savings account," I said slowly.
"I set it up when Zoria was seven.
My wife was added as a joint signatory about four years ago.
I didn't think anything of it at the time."
Patricia set her pen down.
"I need you to check that account today.
Before you do anything else."
Zoria was looking at me.
Her face was very still.
I took out my phone and opened the banking app.
I had not looked at that account in over a year.
The balance had been sitting at just under sixty-two thousand dollars the last time I checked.
The screen loaded.
The balance was four hundred and twelve dollars.
I turned the phone so Patricia could see it.
She looked at the screen.
Then at me.
Then she picked up her pen again.
"When was the last withdrawal?" she asked.
My hands were steady on the phone but my chest felt like something had caved in.
I scrolled through the transaction history.
Fourteen withdrawals over eighteen months.
The first one was small — two thousand dollars.
Then five thousand.
Then larger.
The most recent was eleven thousand, three weeks ago.
"She's been taking it," I said.
"For a year and a half."
"Dad." Zoria's voice was barely above a whisper.
"She's been taking it the whole time."
Patricia was already writing.
"I'm going to need full transaction records.
Screenshots right now, then we'll get certified copies.
Do not contact your wife about this account.
Do not warn her.
Do not give her any indication that you've seen this."
"She told me last night that we could fix it," I said.
"She said it was a miscommunication."
"She was buying time." Patricia didn't say it with anger.
Just with the flat certainty of someone who had seen this before.
"She knew what you'd find eventually.
She was hoping to get ahead of it."
I put the phone in my pocket.
The number — four hundred and twelve dollars — sat in the back of my mind like a stone.
Zoria was quiet for a long moment.
Then she said, "How much of my life did she do this to?"
Neither Patricia nor I answered right away.
"The emails go back to April," Kendra had said.
But the account withdrawals went back eighteen months.
And the registered mail receipt was from March.
And before that — how far before that had my wife been making decisions about Zoria's future without anyone knowing?
"We start with what we can prove," Patricia said.
"The withdrawal form.
The grant letter.
The bank account." She looked at Zoria directly.
"You are going to have to give a formal statement.
It will be uncomfortable.
It will require you to go through everything in detail.
Can you do that?"
Zoria straightened in her chair.
"Yes," she said.
"Good." Patricia tore the top sheet from her legal pad and slid it across the desk.
"I need you to write down every interaction you had with your stepmother about the scholarship.
Dates if you remember them.
Exact words if you can.
Everything she told you, everything she asked you to sign, every time she mentioned Kendra in relation to your future."
Zoria picked up the pen.
She wrote for forty minutes without stopping.
When she finally set the pen down, Patricia read through the pages carefully.
She turned the last one over, read the back, and set it down.
"There's one more thing," she said.
"Kendra."
I looked up.
"Kendra has the emails.
She came forward voluntarily.
That matters." Patricia folded her hands on the desk.
"But she's also a minor, and her mother is about to face serious legal pressure.
When that pressure comes, your wife is going to look for someone to lean on.
Someone to manage.
Someone she still has influence over." She paused.
"Kendra needs to be somewhere safe before that happens."
My phone buzzed on the desk between us.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
Six words.
*She already called me this morning.*
I turned the phone over so Patricia could read it.
Patricia looked at it.
Then she looked at me.
"Is that Kendra's number?"
"I don't know," I said.
"I've never had it."
May you like
Patricia reached for her own phone.
"I think," she said quietly, "we need to move faster than I planned."
