And there has never, in forty years, been a woman less equipped to be audited by me than the one who’d been robbing me blind while I ate from a church box.
Chapter 3: What Thea Took
It took me nine days, a library computer, and a lifetime of practice.
Emmett gave me access to everything — the trust, the accounts, the statements Thea had been “handling” — and then he did the hardest thing for a proud man’s son to do.
He got out of my way and let his old father work.
The trust was real. Emmett had funded it generously, faithfully, for three years. Eight thousand dollars a month, exactly as he believed, flowing out for the care and comfort of his father.
It had never reached me. Not one dollar.
Thea had set herself up as trustee and built a quiet little machine, the kind I’d spent my career taking apart.
