Chapter 5 - THEY HAD PLANNED TO LEAVE HER BEHIND
By noon, my dream vacation had officially become evidence.
The airline refunded my ticket after airport security confirmed the circumstances.
I barely noticed.
My suitcase sat beside an interview room while investigators copied the sticky note, forged guardianship paperwork, transaction history, security footage, and messages from my family.
Mark sat with Lily across the hallway.
She had stopped crying.
That should have made me feel better.
Instead, watching her quietly color a picture beside her father made me furious all over again.
Jessica had prepared to leave the country.
She had left her daughter behind like luggage that exceeded the weight limit.
An investigator entered.
“Ms. Carter, may we ask about your parents' financial situation?”
I almost laughed.
“They told me Dad's car needed major repairs.”
“How much did you give them?”
“About nine thousand dollars over the last three months.”
Mark looked up sharply.
“Nine thousand?”
“They said the transmission failed, then Mom had dental work, then there was a problem with their homeowners insurance.”
The investigator wrote everything down.
“Did you verify any of it?”
“No.”
I hated saying it.
Because no matter how successful I had become professionally, I had still been stupid enough to trust my own parents.
My phone vibrated.
An automated email had arrived from the storage facility near my apartment.
PAYMENT CONFIRMATION.
I frowned.
“I don't rent a storage unit.”
The officer looked over.
I opened the email.
Unit 318.
Rented three weeks earlier.
In my name.
Paid using my credit card.
My pulse jumped.
The officer immediately contacted local police.
Within an hour, officers were standing outside the unit with the storage manager on video call.
I watched from the airport.
The metal door rolled upward.
Inside were boxes.
Dozens of them.
At first I saw nothing unusual.
Then I recognized a pink dollhouse.
Lily had gotten it for Christmas.
A small white bookshelf stood behind it.
Children's clothes filled transparent bins.
A bicycle leaned against the wall.
Mark stood so quickly his chair scraped backward.
“That's Lily's bike.”
The camera moved deeper into the unit.
Her bedroom had been packed away.
Not ten days' worth of belongings.
Everything.
Jessica had emptied her daughter's room before the airport.
Mark put both hands on the table.
“She never intended to come back for her.”
The investigator said nothing.
He didn't need to.
Then one officer at the storage unit lifted a cardboard box marked BROOKE.
My name.
Inside were copies of my tax returns.
Bank statements.
An old passport.
Business-registration documents.
And a folder containing photocopies of my driver's license.
Someone had been collecting my identity for weeks.
The camera moved toward another envelope.
This one was labeled REIMBURSEMENTS.
The local officer opened it.
Dozens of invoices appeared.
All supposedly issued by my design agency.
I stared at the first one.
BROOKE CARTER DESIGN GROUP.
Childcare consulting.
$18,500.
I had never created it.
The second invoice was for $27,000.
The third was $31,400.
All fake.
All carrying my company's logo.
Mark went pale.
“I've seen those.”
I turned toward him.
“Where?”
His voice became quiet.
“In the financial disclosures from Jessica's custody case.”
“What?”
“She claimed she'd been paying your company for private childcare coordination, educational planning, and therapy support for Lily.”
My stomach dropped.
“I have never taken a dollar from Jessica for Lily.”
“I know that now.”
“How much did she claim?”
Mark looked at the documents again.
Then he gave me the number.
Over the previous eighteen months, Jessica had reported more than three hundred thousand dollars in expenses supposedly paid to my business.
Money intended for Lily.
May you like
Money that had disappeared.
And according to the paperwork, I was the person who had received it.
