Which accounts had changed passwords.
Where original documents were stored.
Whether Megan still kept paper copies.
And, in one note written three weeks before her death:
M says I’m making this difficult.
Says family shouldn’t need permission.
I read that sentence several times.
“What money was missing?”
David pointed to the bank summaries.
“Small transfers at first.
Small enough that someone might mistake them for subscriptions or fees.
Megan didn’t.
She traced several attempts to accounts connected to financial arrangements Mitchell had access to through family records.
She hadn’t finished establishing who initiated every transaction.
That’s why she kept collecting evidence instead of confronting him.”
“So you can’t prove he stole it.”
“I can’t,” David said.
“I’m her employer, not law enforcement.
But Megan understood that.
She wasn’t asking me to solve it.
She was asking me to preserve it.”
That distinction mattered.
Megan had not left us an accusation.
She had left a trail that couldn’t easily be erased.
I looked at Beth.
“Did Mitchell know David had this?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then he can’t know now.”
Beth nodded.
“He won’t hear it from me.”
I slid her phone toward her.
“Turn it off.”
She did.
Then I took out mine and powered it down too.
David gave a single nod.
For the first time since I’d arrived home, I felt grief separate itself from confusion.
Megan was still dead.
Nothing in that folder changed that.
But somebody had been counting on her death to make everyone hurry.
We stopped hurrying.
That was the first thing we did.
David made copies of everything Megan had authorized him to preserve.
The originals remained secured.
Beth wrote down, in her own words, exactly what she had seen Mitchell doing after the funeral and every conversation she could remember about Megan’s records.
I didn’t coach her.
Neither did David.
When she couldn’t remember a date, she wrote that she couldn’t remember.
When she wasn’t sure, she said she wasn’t sure.
Megan would have approved.
Then we took the material to people whose job was to examine it properly.
The accounts mentioned in Megan’s notes were flagged before anyone could make further changes.
Requests were made to preserve access records.
The estate paperwork Mitchell had been pushing suddenly became much less urgent than he wanted it to be.
That evening, I went to my parents’ house.
Mitchell was already there.
Of course he was.
