Page 152 of Love Notes & Lifelines
His face explodes in various shades of red, and Elijah hands Emmy a ten-dollar bill.
“Now tell me what you found.”
“This has been going on longer than I’ve been alive, maybe even before you were born too.”
“I’m thirty-five, not eighty.”
“Oh, then definitely since before you were born. Your father started keeping a second set of records almost forty years ago, then Davis found a connection on his side, and then your sister—dang, man. She should have been in the CIA. She pieced it all together even with the missing pieces. My IQ is 120, but she spanked me.”
“Spankin’ is not allowed,” Emmy says, staring at Teddy as if he’s her very own Prince Charming.
That’s a hell no, Emmy!There will be no dating in this house.
His face deepens to near-purple now and he tugs on his collar. “Ah, no. No, it’s not.”
It’s so absurd that I laugh. It sets off a chain reaction that feels a hell of a lot like relief.
“What he’s trying to say is, Cally had it mostly laid out,” Elijah says. “She’d been working on it for years, but she got too sick to finish what she started, and even as confused and paranoid as she was at the end, she started making these plans on the days when confusion didn’t cloud her thinking. Tabby said the only time she was alone was when she took the girls out for playdates, so Cally did all of this, pushing her body to the limit because even in her most paranoid times, she knew you would take care of them. She’s handing it all to you on a silver platter, and you’re lucky enough to have boy genius here to follow her trail.”
“But what is the trail?” Stella asks. “What did they do?”
“They’ve been embezzling money for half a century,” Teddy explains. “We’re talking millions of dollars they’ve stored in various accounts, rolling it from one to another so it never really appears to be gone because the bottom line always adds up, but they had a plan to take it all and run.”
He takes a deep breath, then continues. “It looks like they were waiting until they got a big enough deal, but I can’t even begin to imagine what that would be because Miss Delacroix has doubled down in the last four years. She alone has skimmed nearly two hundred million, and that’s just with a cursory glance—it’s probably much more.”
Stella flashes a small smile in my direction. Teddy is talking faster than any man has a right to speak.
“But,” he says with a grin, “about six months ago is when she managed to get to Caleb. I don’t know what that connection is, but the files in Caleb’s office align with the money trail in Cally’s files. I think Caleb was trying to alter your files to make it look like a merger would be financially irresponsible to ignore. Butwhat Miss Delacroix was really doing was setting it all up so when she took the money, you would take the fall for it all.”
“A cursory glance?” Stella laughs. “Teddy, come on. Your IQ must be higher than 120.”
He shakes his head violently. “No, and honestly, I wouldn’t even be on this track if you hadn’t gotten the ball rolling. This is all because of you.”
Her laughter disappears instantly, and she stands even quicker. “No, I didn’t do anything.”
“You did a good deed because it was the right thing to do,” I remind her. “And now you might have saved our family.”
“No, Teddy did. Cally and Davis did. I’m just—I’m just the—the…”
My head nearly explodes. “I know it’s been a hell of a few days, but going forward, if you ever refer to yourself as ‘just the’ anything other than my wife, my partner, their auntie, mother, or simply Stella again, I will lose my ever-loving mind. Got it?”
“Mommy said I’d get a new mommy who loved me like an angel,” Emmy throws out as if she’s reciting the weather. “You’ll be Mommy Stella, he’ll be Daddy Beck, and I’ll be Emmy Hayes. That’s how it works.”
I’m not sure what’s happening with my face, but the color drains from hers and it’s a perfect picture of how I feel. It’s not the first time Emmy’s said something similar, but it’s the way she says it that hits hard—as though it’s a truth she’s known her entire life.
“Who told you that, Emmy?” I ask, falling to my knees beside her.
“Mommy did. Mommy and Daddy lubed us and now you lub us too.” She looks at Stella and grins. “Stella too. Mommy didn’t know Stella’s name, but she pwomised she’d come.”
“I need a freaking truckload of tissues in this house,” Elijah grumbles.
“You’re not s’posed to curse ’cause we is just kids,” Emmy says with a roll of her shoulders, then her attention is lost to her painting. Daisie is snoring in her lap.
“We don’t have much time to prepare, but we have enough evidence to drag out anything Miss Delacroix might be planning.” Teddy speaks as though he’s in a race with himself.
“Okay, what do you need?” I ask, rising to stand next to Teddy.
Stella squeezes my arm, then returns to the girls on the floor, but it’s a silent promise that passes between us. One that says she’ll protect the girls while I protect our future, and it’s a plan I’m wholeheartedly committed to.
