Chapter 9: The Transfer
1187 Words
WREN POV
“How much?” I asked.
June was quiet for a second. Like she was deciding whether to actually say the number out loud.
“A lot, Wren. Like, a serious amount.”
“June.”
She said the number.
I did not react. I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I pressed my free hand flat on the mattress and I did not react.
“And the date?” I said.
“Four years ago. March. I can send you the exact date when I forward the documents.”
Four years ago. March. I had been three months into my marriage in March four years ago. Still in that honeymoon phase where everything felt new and right and like I had made exactly the correct choice. Seth had been gone from New York. Just gone, no announcement, no goodbye, like he had simply decided to exist somewhere else.
Apparently he had not been that far.
“Send me everything you found,” I said. “All of it.”
“Okay. Wren, what does this mean?”
“I don’t know yet.”
That was a lie. I said it calmly and June heard it but she did not push because June knows me well enough to know when I need space to think.
“Don’t tell Dad you found it,” I said.
“Obviously.” A pause. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
Another lie. She let that one go too.
“I’ll send it now,” she said. “Call me later?”
“Yes.”
I hung up and sat there with my phone in my lap and stared at the wall.
The documents came through in four minutes. I opened every file. Read every page. Went back and read them again.
The transfer was real. Clean and real and sitting right there in black and white. Money moving from a private account under Gus Calloway’s name directly to Seth Maren. No invoice attached. No project name, no company listed, no description of what it was for. Nothing. Just the amount and the date and both names and then silence after that.
I sat with it for two hours.
My father’s name. Seth’s name. Four years ago.
Here was the thing about Gus Calloway. He was not exactly a secret. People who knew me well enough knew I had a father, knew we did not speak much, knew there was something there I did not talk about. But I had never introduced him to anyone in my adult life. Never brought him up in conversation. Never connected him to any part of the world I built after I left his.
For Seth to have a financial connection to Gus meant one of two things. Either Seth went looking for Gus or Gus went looking for Seth. And I turned both of those options over carefully and neither one sat clean. Neither one had an innocent explanation I could find.
I kept coming back to the timing.
Three months into my marriage. Seth leaving New York around that exact same time. A transfer large enough to matter going from my father to Seth with no record of why.
I did not know what story connected those three things yet.
But there was a story. I was sure of that.
The dinner was at eight. Private, Seth’s penthouse dining room, three investors he had been working with for two years. I had forty minutes to change and get my face right.
I did it.
I put on the navy dress and fixed my hair and walked out of my room looking exactly like the version of myself the evening required. Calm, polished, present. The wife of Seth Maren at a business dinner. That was the role and I knew how to play it.
The investors were older men, pleasant enough, the kind who asked careful questions and listened to answers with their whole faces. The food was good. The wine was better. Conversation moved through the usual things, market trends, a new development in Singapore, something about a deal Seth was watching in Chicago.
I smiled at the right moments. Asked questions when it made sense. Laughed once when the man to my left said something genuinely funny.
But every time I looked at Seth across that table I was seeing the number June read me on the phone. The date. My father’s name sitting next to his.
He asked me twice if I was okay.
First time was between the starter and the main course. Leaned in slightly, voice low so the others could not hear.
“You good?”
“Tired,” I said.
He looked at me for a second. Then nodded and turned back to the table.
Second time was when the investors were discussing something between themselves and Seth had a moment of quiet. He looked at me directly.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Long day.”
“Wren.”
“Seth,” I said back. Same tone. Same level.
He held my gaze for a moment and I held his and then the conversation at the table pulled him back and we both turned away.
He did not believe me. I could tell he did not believe me by the way he kept glancing over for the rest of the meal, small quick checks, like he was monitoring something.
I did not care. Let him look. I was not ready.
I needed to decide first what I was going to do with what I knew before I let him anywhere near it.
The investors left just after ten. Handshakes, coats, the usual slow exit that takes twice as long as it should. I stood near the window and watched the city while Seth said goodbye and finally the elevator closed and it was just us.
He came back into the room. Picked up the bottle from the table. Poured two glasses.
He set one in front of me.
I picked it up.
He stayed standing and looked at me and said my name.
“Wren.”
I looked up.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” His voice was careful. More careful than usual. “I’ve been thinking about it for a few days. Tonight I decided the longer I leave it the worse it gets.”
I did not say anything.
“It involves your father,” he said.
My hand was steady around the glass. My face was steady. Everything was very, very steady.
“I should have told you before you agreed to any of this. Before you signed anything. You deserved to know and I kept putting it off and that was wrong.”
He was watching me closely. Looking for a reaction. Trying to read what I already knew, maybe, or just bracing for whatever came next.
I set my glass down on the table.
Slowly. Carefully.
“I already know about the transfer,” I said.
- Writer
