Marcus flinched.
Diane found her voice, thin and shaking. “Don’t listen to her. I don’t know this woman.”
Ruth pulled a small envelope from her coat and set it in front of Marcus without looking at Diane at all.
“You hired me on March 14th. You met me at the diner on Riverside. You told me you needed proof your daughter-in-law had married your son for money, and you said if the proof didn’t exist, I should make it exist.”
“Marcus, this is absurd.”
“I told your mother I don’t fabricate evidence. I’ve had my license for 22 years, and I have never once put my name to a lie. So she fired me.”
Marcus’s hands were flat on the table. He was looking at his mother now, really looking.
“Mom?”
“Marcus, she’s lying, she’s clearly some woman with a grudge.”
“Then explain how she knows about the folder.”
Diane’s mouth opened, then closed.
Ruth slid a small flash drive across the table.
“She hired someone else after me. Someone with fewer scruples at first. The man she hired has a conscience too, eventually. He sent me copies once he realized what he’d helped build. There are recordings on there of her giving him instructions. What screenshots to build. What bank statements to forge. She told him what your wife’s handwriting looked like so the signatures would match.”
I could not breathe. All those weeks of packing and crying and rehearsing apologies, and it had been built in a diner on Riverside, by a woman in a cream coat.
