Page 56 of The Gathered Fragments of Us
"I don't know exactly, but her behavior feels desperate. Why would she try to keep us away from Macy when she doesn't even really know what's happening between us? Even Macy doesn't know the details—just that I went away for my birthday and the thing with the purse. These are not reasons to separate you from your daughter. There has to be something else going on."
"Like what?"
I started thinking out loud, trying to piece together Jessica's erratic behavior. "Maybe things with Brad aren't going well, or what if she like—lost her job, or there's some other kind of personal crisis she doesn't want us to know about? Could something have happened with Macy that she would try to hide from you? Macy hasn't said anything bad about her mom. Iknow she feels guilty sometimes but…" I let my words trail off, not really sure how to articulate what I was thinking.
Before he could answer, his phone rang. Lauren. We were making our way through the kitchen where we could enter the garage.
"Lauren," he answered, while walking. He put it on speaker immediately. "I can't talk right now. Felicity and I are heading over to see Macy. Something's seems off and Jessica won't let us talk to Macy, not really sure w—"
"Caden, stop. Don't go to Jessica's house." Lauren's voice was tight with urgency in a way I'd never heard before. "I need to tell you something, and you're not going to like it."
My blood ran cold. Lauren was always calm, always measured. If she sounded panicked, something was seriously wrong.
He jerked to a stop and coming up behind him I didn't have the chance to stop in time. We collided and his phone skated to the floor.
"Damn—sorry!" Scrambling for the phone, I tried to grab it and it flipped out of my hands again. What the hell?
Caden called out, "Lauren—hang on, I dropped the phone."
Out of breath, I finally had it in hand, and brought it up between us. Caden let out a little laugh and I followed suit. He grabbed the back of my neck, pulled me close and laid a kiss on my forehead. "Shit, I think I needed that," he said, laughing a bit.
Sighing, I leaned further into him, "me too."
"Okay, Lauren," his voice more measured now. "What's going on?"
"Are you sitting down?"
"No, but I'm sure we'll survive. Just lay it on us."
"Okay, well—don't say I didn't warn you. So, those financial irregularities we found?" I looked up at Caden, confused. He whispered to me "I'll explain in a minute."
"Go on."
Lauren said, "I took the information over to Jackson over in the Forensic Accounting team. Gave him all the information and the file we put together. He found some major irregularities. He brought Janice from Legal just to have her take a look. I guess Janice found some major concerns and reached out to a contact she has at the DA's office.
"Shit. Really? What did they say?"
"Well, apparently with our current suspicions, there is a huge list of possible crimes. Larceny by False Pretenses, Identity Fraud, Forgery, and even some Computer-related crimes—that's just to name a few, Caden."
Caden pulled out the kitchen table chair and sat down. Motioning for me to do the same, I took the chair next to him. With the phone on the table between us, we listened to Lauren continue.
"No freaking way."
"Yes, way."
"You're serious?"
"As a heart attack, Caden. If it's true then she's been accessing your email account and submitting forged documents for payment in your name, to be paid by the company. Where we thought we were paying a vendor fee or standard operatingexpense, she was taking that money and using for personal reasons—though I don't know what for."
"What the fuck do I do? Lauren, she has my kid. I want Macy out from under her! Does she know we're looking into this—I mean. FUCK!" He yelled the last, clearly a demonstration of frustration and anger.
I piped up, "Hey Lauren, it's Felicity."
"Hi Felicity. I'm sorry for all this stuff going down."
"I know. And thank you. I think I missed something though—how did we find out about it?"
There was a pause. Then Caden started out…slowly, "so, when everything happened with the purse, I asked Lauren to put together a list of all the things I'd gotten—I mean, she'd gotten for you over the years." He hung his head, clearly in shame.
