Chapter 6: The One She Trusted
The name on the folder was Cara.
Maya said it aloud before she could stop herself — just the name, nothing else, in a voice that had lost its edges.
"Cara."
Gerald set the folder down on the table without opening it.
"She came to Daniel in March," he said.
"She had documentation — screenshots of messages, records of two wire transfers, and a copy of the incorporation papers for Larkfield Consulting." He paused.
"She said she'd been aware of the situation for several months and that she could no longer stay quiet."
Maya turned away from the table.
She walked three steps toward the garden wall and stood there with her back to the group, her shoulders pulled up slightly, her hand pressed flat against the warm stone.
Nobody rushed her.
Evelyn watched and said nothing.
"Cara is my best friend," Maya said, to the wall, to the garden, to nobody in particular.
"She's been my best friend since we were nineteen years old."
"I know," Gerald said.
"She mentioned that."
Maya turned around.
Her face had rearranged itself again — not the controlled blankness from before, but something rawer, more disorganized.
She looked, for a moment, genuinely young.
"Why?" she said.
"Why would she—"
"She didn't want to," Gerald said.
"That was the first thing she told Daniel.
She said she spent six weeks trying to convince herself it wasn't her business." He removed a single page from the folder and laid it on the table, face up.
"But then she saw the third transfer.
The one made in February.
She said that was when she decided."
Maya didn't move toward the page.
"What was in the February transfer?" Evelyn asked.
Gerald glanced at Evelyn and then back to Maya.
"The funds were moved to an offshore account opened in the name of a man named Scott Reeves." He folded his hands.
"Mr.
Reeves and Mrs.
Maya have been in contact for approximately fourteen months."
The garden went very still.
One of the older aunts set her glass down on the stone wall beside her.
She didn't pick it up again.
Evelyn closed her eyes for two seconds.
Just two.
Then she opened them and looked at her nephew Edward standing near the hedge, and something passed between them — a look that said they had hoped this part wasn't true and now had to accept that it was.
"That's a lie," Maya said.
"There are four hundred and eleven messages," Gerald said.
"Cara provided records of one hundred and sixty-three of them.
Daniel's solicitors have since obtained the full record through a subject access request." He didn't say it unkindly.
He said it the way a doctor gives a diagnosis — steadily, with the understanding that the person receiving it needs steadiness more than sympathy right now.
"Mr.
Reeves was also a beneficiary of the Larkfield account.
Thirty-eight thousand pounds across seven months."
Maya's jaw worked.
She looked at the page on the table.
Then at Evelyn.
Then at Gerald.
"I want everyone to leave," she said.
"This is private.
This is—"
"This is my garden," Evelyn said.
Not loudly.
"And these are my family and friends.
They will stay as long as they wish."
"You have no right—"
"Maya." Evelyn took two steps toward her — not aggressive, not intimidating, just closing the distance so that what she said next would be between them.
"I have spent two years watching you take things from my son.
His money.
His confidence.
His trust in his own judgment." Her voice didn't rise.
"I have one son.
And you spent two years trying to hollow him out." She stopped.
"So no.
You do not get to ask my guests to leave."
The silence that followed had weight to it.
Maya opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Then she picked up her phone from her pocket, looked at the screen, and put it back without dialing.
Gerald gathered the pages on the table into their folders.
"There's one more matter," he said.
He reached to the bottom of his document case and removed a smaller envelope — white, sealed, with Maya's name written on the outside in handwriting she recognized immediately as Cara's.
He placed it on the table beside the folders.
"She asked me to give you that," he said.
"She said to tell you she was sorry she couldn't be here to give it to you herself.
But that she thought, given everything, it was better this way."
Maya looked at the envelope.
She did not touch it.
"Is she here?" Maya asked.
"Is Cara — is she somewhere nearby?"
May you like
Gerald clicked his pen closed.
"She's at Daniel's."
