The Power of Attorney
Chapter 02 - The Power of Attorney
Two years before the wedding, Emily had sat in a JAG office on base, twenty-six years old and eleven days from deployment, signing a stack of paperwork that felt routine at the time.
Among it, a limited power of attorney, naming her father, Robert, as manager of her military allotment account while she was overseas. Standard practice for deployed soldiers without a spouse, a way to keep bills paid and pay allotments handled while you couldn't manage them yourself from a forward operating base with spotty internet and worse hours.
"It's just for bills," the JAG attorney had told her. "Rent, car payment, anything automatic. Most soldiers set this up. It's not a big deal."
Emily hadn't thought about it again until the night she called from a hospital bed in Germany, asking her father for five thousand dollars to cover the portion of her surgery insurance wouldn't touch.
"Let me check the account and see what we can do," Robert had said. "I'll call you back."
He hadn't called back. Two days later, when Emily called again, Diane had answered instead.
"Your father says we're stretched thin right now," Diane said. "We'll think about it."
Emily had assumed, reasonably, that her deployment allotment covered exactly what it always had, rent on the apartment she'd kept, her car payment, small automatic bills that ate most but not all of her pay. She hadn't thought to ask for a full accounting. She'd been in a hospital bed. She'd had other things to think about.
It was Nia, her battle buddy, who first planted the seed of doubt, three days after the wedding, when the two of them sat together going over what had happened on the dock.
"You had a power of attorney set up for your dad," Nia said. "Right? Standard deployment paperwork."
"Yeah," Emily said. "Just for bills."
"Did you ever actually see a full statement," Nia asked. "Not just the automatic payments clearing. The full account, balance and all."
Emily sat with that question a long moment, feeling something cold settle low in her stomach.
"No," she said slowly. "I never asked. I trusted him to handle it."
"Maybe it's nothing," Nia said. "But given what you told me about the yacht showing up the same week they said they couldn't help with five thousand dollars, I think it's worth finding out exactly what was in that account the whole time."
Emily reached for her phone that same afternoon, pulling up the online portal for her military financial services account, one she hadn't logged into personally in over two years, having left it entirely to her father's management under the power of attorney.
May you like
The login screen asked for a security question she barely remembered setting up.
She answered it, hands steadier than she expected, and waited for the account to load.
