On the screen were filings—quiet ones, the kind most people never read unless they’re looking for something specific. A nonprofit foundation tied to my parents’ names. A shell LLC with a mailing address that bounced between two P.O.
boxes. The same “consulting” vendor appearing across years, across events, across budgets, always rounded, always clean, always just under thresholds that trigger questions. “It’s not one thing,” Marcus said.
“It’s a pattern.”
My stomach hollowed out as the pieces clicked. The gala. The sermons about integrity.
The way my dad insisted on handling the books himself “to protect the mission.” The way he flinched when I asked a basic question—What services did they provide? “This is why he didn’t argue with you,” Marcus continued. “If he’d engaged, he risked you asking again.
And again. So he did the only thing that works in a small town.”
He made me the problem. By disowning me publicly, he set the narrative before anyone could ask for evidence.
He turned curiosity into disloyalty. He wrapped fear in righteousness and let the crowd do the rest. I felt sick—not just at the numbers, but at the elegance of it.
How cleanly he’d cut me out to protect himself. “What do we do?” I asked. Marcus closed the laptop.
“We do nothing loud. We do nothing emotional. We do what you’re good at.”
Facts.
Timelines. Receipts. Over the next two weeks, we worked at night after the kids were asleep.
We pulled public records, compared filings, matched deposits to invoices. We didn’t speculate. We documented.
When something didn’t have proof, we left it out. The truth didn’t need help. The town kept whispering.
Church friends stopped meeting my eyes. Someone dropped off a casserole with a note that said praying for reconciliation, like reconciliation was my responsibility to initiate with someone who’d thrown the first stone. Then my mom called—late, quiet, like she was standing in a hallway she didn’t own anymore.
“He’s scared,” she said. I didn’t answer that. “He thinks you’re going to ruin everything.”
I still didn’t answer.
“Wendy,” she whispered, “can’t you just let it go?”
I thought about my daughter asking if she was bad too. I thought about the foundation donors who believed in something real. I thought about how my dad had chosen a crowd over his own child.
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