Chapter 3: The Woman at the Door
The knocking came again, three sharp blows.
“Nathan, who is it?”
He reached for the phone.
“Give me that first.”
I stepped back.
“Answer me.”
A woman’s voice came through the door.
“Nathan, I know you’re in there.”
Susan.
I opened the door before he could stop me.
She stood on the porch holding a leather folder, but the confident smile from dinner was gone.
“You left quickly,” I said.
Susan looked past me.
“Nathan, we need to finish this tonight.”
“You forged my signature.”
Her eyes returned to mine.
“It’s an administrative form.”
“It has my name on it.”
“The landlord requires spousal consent.
You would have signed eventually.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me?”
Nathan moved between us.
“Susan, go home.”
“No.” She opened the folder.
“If this isn’t submitted by midnight, the relocation payment gets flagged.”
“What payment?” I asked.
Neither of them answered.
I held up Nathan’s phone.
“How much?”
Susan pressed her lips together.
“How much, Nathan?”
“Forty-eight thousand dollars,” he said.
I gripped the doorframe.
“For a four-month assignment?”
“It includes housing, travel, furnishings and incidentals.”
“Then why share an apartment?”
Susan closed the folder.
“Because the payment is fixed.
Whatever we don’t spend, we keep.”
“We?”
“Natalie, stop twisting every word.”
“I’m reading the words you sent.”
Nathan rubbed both hands over his face.
“I told her I wasn’t comfortable with the consent form.”
Susan laughed once.
“After you approved the arrangement.”
“I approved the apartment, not her signature.”
“Your email says otherwise.”
Nathan froze.
“What email?” I asked.
Susan pulled out a printed page.
“The one where he told me to handle whatever paperwork was needed.”
Nathan snatched it from her.
His eyes moved across the page.
“I didn’t write this.”
“It came from your account.”
“I never sent it.”
Susan’s voice softened.
“Think carefully before you accuse me.
Mr.
Bennett will see this first thing tomorrow.”
I took the page from Nathan.
The message ended with his usual work signature, but one sentence sounded wrong: Natalie doesn’t need the details.
“Nathan never calls me Natalie in emails,” I said.
“He calls me Nat.”
Susan’s gaze flickered toward the phone in my hand.
I noticed it.
“Did you expect me to be too jealous to read carefully?”
“You’re upset.
I understand.”
“No, you expected Nathan to keep lying until the paperwork cleared.”
Nathan stepped toward her.
“What did you do?”
Susan’s face hardened.
“I protected the project and both our careers.”
“You copied her signature.”
“I solved a problem you created.”
I lifted the printed email.
“Leave the rest of the documents.”
“They’re company records.”
“They concern my signature.”
Susan clutched the folder against her chest.
“You’ll get nothing from me.”
I reached toward the small screen beside the door.
“Our porch camera recorded everything you just said.”
Her eyes moved to the camera.
Then she smiled.
“Good.
It also recorded Nathan admitting he approved the apartment.”
She turned to him.
“If I go down, Nathan, you go first.”
Nathan’s shoulders dropped.
Susan stepped off the porch, then looked back at me.
“Ask your husband why the relocation money was deposited six days ago.”
I shut the door and faced him.
“Where is the money?”
Nathan stared at the floor.
“It isn’t in my account.”
“Then whose account is it in?”
His phone buzzed in my hand.
A banking alert filled the screen.
FORTY-EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS had just been transferred—and the destination carried my name.
