My Wife Sent Me to a Psych Ward, So I Gave Her a Big Surprise novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Unit 114

I pulled the box marked ROS - SIGNED into the light and lifted the lid.

It was full of paper with her signature on it.

Every page had a yellow tab where the line was.

"I didn't sign all of those," Rosalind said from the doorway.

"You signed most of them," I said.

"I signed what he put in front of me." Her voice cracked. "I told you that."

I did not answer.

Maura took the next box down and opened it on the concrete floor.

It held ledgers in green cloth covers, one for each year, in Brooks's square handwriting.

I opened the oldest and ran my finger down the page.

A vendor called Teller Fuel and Fleet had billed Ostrow Freight for diesel every month.

I had never seen that name on a truck, a pump or an invoice.

"Year four," I said. "That's when it starts."

"What starts?" Maura said.

"Ten years of fuel we never bought."

I turned to the last page of the first ledger, where he had totaled it in pencil.

It was nine million four hundred thousand dollars.

My hands were steady, and I made them keep being steady.

"He told me margins were thin," I said. "Every year at the Christmas party he told me we were lucky to break even."

"I thought we were lucky," Rosalind said.

"Whose name is on Teller Fuel's account?"

She came in, slowly, one hand on the shelving, and looked at the page.

"Mine," she said. "I'm the authorized signer. He said it was an LLC for the house and the taxes."

I turned back through the ledger.

For the first four years the account carried Brooks's name, and after the wedding it carried hers.

"You never looked."

"I looked once." She sat down on a box and held her stomach. "I found one invoice, and he told me you'd put me on every account in the company so you could hide it from the IRS. After that I was too scared to look again."

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