Chapter 11: The Morning After the Aisle
The next morning we met with the attorney Ethan had already contacted on my behalf. The office was small and precise, the kind of room that dealt in documents rather than drama. Copies of the charity-fund records were reviewed again, this time with my signature on the acknowledgment that I had received them and understood the scope of the referral already made to the attorney general’s office. The transfers were not ambiguous. Money designated for community programs had been moved, repeatedly, into accounts that covered operational shortfalls and personal expenses connected to the dealerships. The charity had carried my mother’s name as honorary chair for nearly a decade. The attorney explained the likely sequence: formal notice to the foundation board, preservation orders on financial records, and the possibility of both civil recovery and criminal referral depending on the final forensic accounting. Ethan sat beside me without attempting to manage my reactions. He answered only the questions directed to him about the timeline of his own review and the decision to turn the file over once the threshold was met. I signed what was required. Outside the office the Charleston morning continued ordinary traffic and ordinary heat. Inside the new marriage, the first shared task had become the management of an investigation that reached directly into the family I had just legally left behind at the chapel doors.
