“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re vice president of the company.”
“Dad controls the private books.”
“Convenient.”
“Claire, I swear I didn’t know there was money connected to you.”
I stopped.
“Connected to me?”
Silence.
Too late.
“Daniel.”
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Connected to me how?”
“Dad told me years ago that one investment account had your name somewhere in the documents.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never asked?”
“He said it was technical.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“For eleven years, everything I questioned was ‘technical,’ ‘complicated,’ or ‘nothing to worry about.’”
“I know.”
“No, you’re beginning to know.”
He sounded exhausted.
“Vanessa won’t tell me anything.”
“She told me to ask Patricia.”
“Patricia says she doesn’t know.”
“Then one of them is lying.”
“Probably both.”
That answer was so unlike Daniel that I almost didn’t recognize him.
Then he said, “Claire, Dad left the house.”
