Not the First Time
Chapter 07 - Not the First Time
The lawyer Nathan called, a careful, thorough woman named Diane Okafor who specialized in family financial disputes, arrived the following morning and spent three hours going through every detail of the previous night before offering a single opinion.
"I want to be direct with you both," Okafor said, closing her legal pad. "This isn't a simple one-time incident to document and move past. Given the scale of Eleanor's debt and the sophistication of how she accessed and nearly moved forty-two thousand dollars without either of you noticing until Claire happened to walk in, I need to ask if there's been unexplained money missing before this."
Claire and Nathan exchanged a look.
"There was a discrepancy about eight months ago," Claire said slowly. "Around three thousand dollars from our joint household account. We assumed it was a bookkeeping error at the time. Eleanor had access to that account for bill management while we were traveling for Lily's early diagnosis appointments."
Okafor made a note. "I'd want that traced properly. In my experience, a debt this size, hidden this successfully for three years, rarely stays contained to a single attempted theft. People managing this kind of pressure tend to test smaller amounts first, see what goes unnoticed, before attempting something larger."
Nathan looked pale, the implications settling into a shape he clearly hadn't wanted to consider yet.
"You think she's been taking money for longer than last night," he said.
"I think it's worth finding out for certain, rather than assuming last night was an isolated lapse," Okafor said. "Both for your own financial protection and because it changes how seriously the police should take last night's incident if you decide to report it."
Claire pulled up their joint account statements that afternoon, going back two full years, the same methodical patience she'd once used cataloging Lily's early symptoms before doctors finally identified the correct diagnosis.
She found four discrepancies total, small enough individually to explain away, substantial enough combined to paint a clear picture once she stopped assuming innocent explanations for each one.
Eleven thousand dollars, spread across two years, moved in amounts small enough that neither she nor Nathan had ever thought to question them individually.
"Eleven thousand," Claire said, showing Nathan the compiled total that evening. "Not counting last night's forty-two thousand. Two years of small amounts you and I both assumed were our own bookkeeping mistakes."
Nathan stared at the number, something in his expression finally, fully cracking the last of his instinctive defense of his mother.
"I need to talk to her again," he said. "Properly this time. Not just about Victor Pryce. About all of it."
Eleanor, confronted with the full documented total that evening, didn't try to deny it the way Claire half expected her to.
May you like
"I always intended to pay it back," she said quietly. "Every single time. I just never managed to before needing to take more."
"That's what everyone says," Claire said, "right up until the amount gets large enough that paying it back stops being realistic at all."
