Chapter 5 - Margaret Admits the First Lie
Margaret asked Lily to leave the room.
Emily refused to let Margaret give orders.
Instead, Robert took Lily into the den, turned on a Christmas movie, and
remained nearby until the child settled.
When he returned, Margaret was still standing beside the ruined table.
“I didn’t steal the retirement money,” she said.
Robert’s face tightened.
“Then what did you do?”
“I knew Thomas didn’t steal it.”
Silence.
Margaret explained that twenty-eight years earlier she discovered
irregular bank statements in Robert’s study.
She confronted Thomas because she assumed he was responsible.
Thomas denied it.
Then Margaret found something else.
A transfer authorization bearing Robert’s signature.
Robert stared at her.
“I never signed one.”
“I know that now.”
At the time, Margaret believed Robert had participated in the theft.
She was pregnant with Michael.
She panicked.
Thomas discovered the same forged documents.
He believed exposing the fraud would destroy Robert and the company.
So Thomas made a disastrous choice.
He accepted responsibility.
“Why?” Michael asked.
Margaret looked at Robert.
“Because your father had already had one heart attack.”
Robert shook his head.
“I was thirty-six.”
“You were sick.”
“I was not dying.”
“I was terrified.”
Emily watched Margaret turn fear into justification again.
Thomas went to prison believing he was protecting Robert from a scandal
he thought Robert had unknowingly helped create.
But Robert had not stolen the money.
Neither had Thomas.
Michael asked the obvious question.
“Then who did?”
Margaret looked at Jennifer’s folder.
“Samuel Walsh suspected someone.”
Jennifer went pale.
“My father?”
“No. Your father suspected the company controller.”
Robert whispered the name.
“Edward Pierce.”
Edward had been Robert and Thomas’s closest friend.
He died twelve years earlier.
Michael exhaled.
“So the person responsible is dead.”
Margaret shook her head.
“Edward didn’t work alone.”
She looked directly at Jennifer.
“Your father knew that too.”
Jennifer stiffened.
“Who was the other person?”
May you like
Margaret’s answer was barely audible.
“Your mother.”
