The Lie Hidden in the Bakery Books
Chapter 07 - The Lie Hidden in the Bakery Books
I did not confront Lauren.
Not yet.
Daniel wanted to.
My mother wanted to.
Margaret, surprisingly, told us not to.
“People who are cornered often give you the truth they think you already know,” she said. “Find out what she thinks you don’t.”
It was the smartest thing Margaret had ever said to me.
So Daniel and I spent the next day in the bakery office.
The room had once belonged to my father.
His old radio still sat on the filing cabinet, and a pencil mark on the wall showed where he measured Lauren and me every birthday until I was seventeen.
I had to look away from it.
Daniel opened the financial records.
The missing $85,300 was real.
But it was not the only problem.
Lauren had created false vendor invoices.
Sixteen of them.
Some were small enough to disappear inside ordinary expenses. Others were labeled equipment deposits.
The total was $112,640.
I felt physically sick.
Daniel leaned back from the computer.
“There’s more.”
“Of course there is.”
He turned the screen toward me.
A loan application had been submitted in the bakery’s name.
My electronic signature was attached.
I had never signed it.
The application had been denied because of incomplete documentation, but if it had gone through, the business would have been responsible for another $150,000.
I covered my face.
For years, Lauren and I had worked six days a week together.
We had survived our father’s death together.
We had stood in the bakery freezer the morning after his funeral, holding each other because neither of us knew how to open the shop without him.
How did that sister become this woman?
Daniel closed the laptop.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at him.
“For which part?”
“For finding it and not telling you sooner.”
The anger returned.
Quietly.
Cleanly.
“You thought waiting was kindness.”
“I did.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I know.”
I stood.
He did too.
“I need you to understand something,” I said. “Lauren lied to me with money. You lied to me with silence. Those are not the same betrayal.”
Daniel nodded.
“But they both took away my right to choose what I did with the truth.”
His eyes lowered.
“You’re right.”
No defense.
No excuse.
That made me want to forgive him.
I wasn’t ready.
Before we could say more, someone knocked on the front door.
It was Marcy Hill, a former bakery employee Lauren had fired three months earlier.
Marcy held a manila folder against her chest.
“I saw the wedding video,” she said.
Then she looked at the dark kitchen behind me.
“That knife didn’t disappear on your wedding day.”
My pulse jumped.
“When did it disappear?”
May you like
Marcy’s answer changed the entire timeline.
“Three weeks ago.”
