Chapter 4 - THE ACCOUNT UNDER ANOTHER NAME
I had discovered the second account six weeks before the baptism.
Not because I was spying on Daniel.
Because I was trying to understand how we could be almost broke when both of us had worked for years.
My attorney, Rebecca Sloan, had asked me to gather the financial records I could lawfully access.
Rebecca was forty-seven, practical, and so calm that the first time I told her about Daniel, she didn't gasp.
She simply took notes.
When I apologized for crying, she pushed a tissue box across her desk.
“Jennifer, you don't have to make your story easier for me to hear.”
I never forgot that.
During our third appointment, I showed her an unexplained transfer.
Twenty-eight hundred dollars had left our joint account and gone to an account under the name Northbridge Family Services.
Rebecca frowned.
“Do you recognize the business?”
“No.”
“Do you know why Daniel paid them?”
“No.”
She examined the transaction.
“We'll request an explanation through the financial disclosure process.”
I nodded.
Then she looked at me.
“Have you spoken to anyone about what you found?”
“Only you.”
“Good. Let's keep the evidence organized and let the records lead us.”
Three days after the baptism, Rebecca called me into her office.
Daniel had finally responded to the divorce petition.
His attorney claimed the money transferred to Chloe had been voluntary family spending rather than improper depletion of marital assets.
Rebecca explained that the legal significance would depend on facts, dates, ownership, and applicable law.
“But the Northbridge payments are different,” she said.
“How?”
“They appear connected to an account associated with Daniel's separate business interests.”
I frowned.
“He doesn't own a business.”
“That's what we're trying to establish.”
Daniel worked as a regional sales director for an insurance brokerage. He earned a good salary, received bonuses, and complained constantly about taxes.
He had always told me he preferred the security of employment.
Yet the account records suggested he'd been moving money through a small consulting company.
Rebecca showed me the incorporation record.
Northbridge Advisory LLC.
Registered agent: an outside business services company.
Manager listed in a separate filing: Daniel Hayes.
I stared.
“He has a company?”
“Apparently.”
“Since when?”
“Nearly two years.”
My stomach tightened.
That was before Chloe's pregnancy.
Before our marriage began falling apart.
Before Daniel started telling me we needed to be careful about money.
I remembered the countless evenings he'd spent in his office.
The locked drawers.
The phone calls he took outside.
I had assumed he was working.
Maybe he was.
Just not on the life he'd promised to build with me.
That evening, I moved into a small rented apartment with my mother helping me carry Lily's things.
It wasn't luxurious.
The kitchen had yellow cabinets.
The living-room carpet was worn.
The bathroom was barely large enough for the baby bathtub.
But the landlord had agreed to a reasonable lease, and the windows let in beautiful afternoon light.
I placed Lily in her crib.
She stretched one tiny arm toward the ceiling.
I smiled.
“Welcome home, sweetheart.”
My mother stood in the doorway.
“You okay?”
I looked around.
For the first time in months, I wasn't waiting to hear Daniel's key turn in the lock.
I didn't have to pretend I was asleep when he came home late.
I didn't have to wonder whether a text message was from Chloe.
I could breathe.
“I'm scared,” I admitted.
Mom nodded.
“Of course you are.”
“What if I can't do this?”
She walked toward me.
“You already are.”
I looked at my daughter.
Then at the tiny apartment.
And realized something surprising.
I had spent years believing security meant living in the big house with two incomes and a husband who handled everything.
Now I was surrounded by secondhand furniture, unpaid questions, and an uncertain future.
Yet this little apartment felt safer than the marriage I'd left.
At ten that night, my phone vibrated.
Daniel.
We need to talk about Northbridge. You've misunderstood what it is.
I stared.
Then another message appeared.
And Jennifer, if you make those records public, you won't be the only one embarrassed.
For the first time since the baptism, I felt genuine fear.
May you like
Because Daniel wasn't only worried about losing money.
He was worried about what an investigation might reveal.
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