Page 96 of The Moment They Can't Forget

He did as she asked, and then Zoe took it from him.

“Okay, boy, let’s get you home.” She led Roman slowly back to where the others were still standing. She was on one side of the horse, and JD the other.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said.

“Now tell me about your father and why you left before we get back to the others, and then we’ll be even and have something on each other we don’t want anyone to know.”

He snorted softly at her words. There was a long pause, and then he began to talk.

“My dad was a pretty cool guy. Uptight and rich, for sure, but he always had time for me and Henry, and I have no idea why I’m telling you this part.”

“Sometimes it just feels right to talk,” Zoe said.

“Yeah, maybe that’s it. This shit has been rolling around inside me for years,” JD surprised her then by saying. “One day I was at the office. We all worked together. To be honest, I was getting to the point where I felt frustrated and wanted out but wasn’t sure how. Dad was taking the day off and asked me to go to his computer and print out some documents. I did it, but there was this folder on his desktop that had no words, just dollar signs. I’m still not sure why I opened it, but it held details of everything my father was doing. The embezzling. Who he was stealing from, and how much he’d taken. He’d been doing it for years.”

Zoe whistled. “He must have been pretty confident he wouldn’t get caught if he left it sitting right there.”

“My dad doesn’t understand stuff like hard drives, iCloud, and Dropbox, Zoe.”

“So you confronted him?”

“I did. I went home and waited for him. I told Mom and Henry I wanted them there too. After I’d finished telling my father what I’d found, he said yes, he had done everything I accused him of, and basically so what.” She could hear the anger in his voice.

“I’m so sorry. That must have been hard.”

“He thought I’d just side with him, Zoe. That I’d want in on all the corruption and other shit he was into.”

“What did your mom and Henry say?”

“They were shocked understandably, and it was genuine. They hadn’t known. But when I said it had to stop and he had to pay every cent back and own up, they backed my father when he refused. I believed that was because they didn’t want the life they had to come tumbling down around them.”

Zoe whistled softly.

“I realized then I was the only one who would stand against Dad if he didn’t come clean and face what he’d done. I couldn’t live with that and left.”

“Because if you stayed, you would have had to turn your dad in?”

“I didn’t have to. Someone else came after him, and he ended up in court. My dad had more money and good lawyers—the best in the country—so he got off.”

She could hear the disgust in his voice.

“Leaving your family had to be hard, but realizing the man you respected was not who you’d always thought he was had to hurt.”

“It was hell,” he said, and she heard the pain that he still carried in his voice.

“You need to deal with it, JD.”

“And how exactly do I do that?”

“Henry came to see you. What did he say about it?”

JD’s sigh was loud enough to move the long grass two paddocks away.

“That I left them without a word. That they were lost without me, and it was like I had died. That I need to come home and see Dad because he’s dying. We talked, Zoe, and he left on good terms.”

“Well, that’s good, and it sounds to me like you have a plan,” Zoe said. “So are we done opening veins now?”

“Yes. Thanks for listening, and I still want the name of that asshole who harassed you.”

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