Chapter 3 - THE LETTER HER MOTHER LEFT BEHIND
Natalie returned to her father's house the following morning.
Frank Brooks lived in a modest home outside Monterey, surrounded by rose bushes and the kind of carefully maintained lawn that suggested a man who needed something predictable in his life.
He opened the door wearing his old gardening sweater.
Then he saw the ring on her finger.
“Natalie?”
She stepped inside.
“Dad, I need to ask you something about Mom.”
His expression changed.
“What happened?”
She explained the financial transfer, the forged signature, and the company registered under her mother's name.
Frank listened without interrupting.
When she finished, he sat down slowly.
“I hoped you would never have to deal with this.”
Natalie felt her stomach tighten.
“You knew?”
“I knew your mother had been involved in something complicated. I didn't know the details.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because she asked me not to.”
Natalie stared at him.
“Everyone keeps making decisions about what I can handle.”
Frank looked wounded.
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
He walked to a small cabinet beside the fireplace and removed an envelope.
Inside was a handwritten letter dated four months before Margaret's death.
Frank,
If anyone ever asks Natalie about the Prescott accounts, tell her to look for the blue ledger. I kept it because I no longer trust the people who claim to be protecting the company.
Do not give it to Graham until you know whether he is involved.
Above all, do not let Diane convince Natalie that silence is the same as loyalty.
Natalie read the letter twice.
Her mother's handwriting was unmistakable.
“Where is the ledger?”
Frank looked toward the garage.
“She hid it somewhere in the house. I never found it.”
Natalie spent the next three hours searching.
She checked the attic, the basement, and the cabinets where her mother had kept old school papers.
Finally, she found a small metal box behind a row of paint cans.
Inside was a blue ledger, a flash drive, and a photograph of Margaret standing beside Graham's father, Robert Prescott.
On the back, Margaret had written:
The night we decided to tell the truth.
Natalie felt a chill.
Robert Prescott had died in a boating accident seven years earlier. His death had left Graham in charge of the family business and Miles free to pursue a more glamorous life.
She opened the ledger.
The first pages contained ordinary household accounts. The later pages listed company payments, private loans, and transfers made through several subsidiaries.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Richard Vale.
Another appeared beside it.
Diane Prescott.
Natalie called Graham.
He arrived within forty minutes.
When he saw the photograph, his expression darkened.
“My father and your mother knew each other.”
“Apparently.”
“I knew they worked on a charity project together. I didn't know anything about a ledger.”
They examined the documents at the kitchen table.
A pattern emerged.
Seven years earlier, Robert had discovered that money from the Prescott charitable foundation was being diverted into private investment companies. Margaret had helped him trace the transfers.
The investigation stopped abruptly after Robert's death.
Margaret died four months later.
The official records described her death as complications following a routine medical procedure.
Natalie remembered the hospital room, the quiet doctors, and her father's exhausted face.
She had never questioned the explanation.
Now she wanted to scream.
“Do you think they were killed?” she asked.
Graham closed the ledger.
“I don't know.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I refuse to invent answers when the truth is still available.”
She stood abruptly.
“My mother is dead. Your father is dead. Someone stole eighteen million dollars, and every person who might explain what happened seems to have disappeared.”
Graham rose too.
“I know.”
“No, you don't. You had a family company to inherit. I had a father who stopped sleeping and a mother who never came home.”
His face tightened.
“You're right.”
The immediate agreement took some of the force out of her anger.
Graham continued.
“I can't know what that cost you. But I can help you find out what happened.”
Natalie looked at him for a long moment.
Then she sat down again.
They spent the afternoon making copies of the records and preparing a timeline for Evelyn.
Just before sunset, Natalie found a folded note hidden in the ledger's back cover.
It contained three words.
Ask about Camille.
She stared at the name.
Camille Rhodes.
Miles's first love.
The woman who had walked into Natalie's wedding wearing a bridal gown.
Graham read the note over her shoulder.
His expression became unreadable.
“Camille worked for my father briefly,” he said. “Before she left California.”
“When?”
“Seven years ago.”
Natalie remembered Camille telling her that she had met Miles at a charity event shortly after graduating from college.
That timeline had always seemed plausible.
Now she wondered whether it had been carefully constructed.
Graham called Evelyn and asked her to investigate Camille's employment records.
An hour later, the lawyer called back.
Camille had worked as a junior analyst for the Prescott Foundation during the same period Margaret and Robert had investigated the missing funds.
Her employment had ended abruptly three days after Robert's death.
And there was something else.
Camille's older brother had been Richard Vale's personal assistant.
He had died in a car accident two months before Margaret.
Natalie sat motionless.
The wedding betrayal suddenly seemed like a small piece of a much larger puzzle.
Then her phone rang.
Camille.
Natalie answered.
“What do you want?”
Camille's voice was unsteady.
“I need to tell you something about Miles.”
“You had your chance.”
“I know. But this isn't about the affair.”
“Then what is it about?”
Camille took a shaky breath.
“The money was never supposed to go to Miles. He was trying to get it back.”
Natalie looked at Graham.
Camille continued.
May you like
“And if Richard finds out I told you, neither of us will be safe.”
The line went dead.
