Rhett knew that. I asked Dash whether he was letting Rhett use the lake house because Rhett was threatening him. Dash looked down at the floor. He didn't say no. I looked at Rhett and asked whether he'd been using something from the company to keep Dash quiet about the affair.
He gave me a tired, irritated smile. He said I was making accusations I couldn't back up. Dash pulled me aside near the front door. He said Rhett had copies of some old invoices and emails. He said there had been billing problems on a couple of jobs and they were trying to work it out.
I asked what kind of problems. He said Rhett had threatened to pull his crews off two jobs that were already running late. Dash had approved invoices for work not yet finished to keep those crews on site expecting the paperwork to catch up. Some of it never did. Rhett had emails proving Dash knew that when he signed off.
I asked whether clients had paid for work that wasn't done. He said it wasn't that simple. I told him he needed to explain it to Dad not to me. He said Dad digging into it could hurt the business and the employees depending on those jobs. I told him I was going to Dad.
Then I asked him one last question. When I got laid off years ago, Dash had showed up with groceries before I'd even told him I was short on money. He'd known I needed help then. So I asked him how he could sit across from me all these months and not tell me what was happening in my own house. He stared at the floor.
I asked if Rhett hadn't had those invoices, would he have told me about Maren? I waited. He said, "I don't know." I left without saying goodbye to Rhett. Dash followed me to the porch and said he'd call me after he'd had time to explain everything.
I told him not to call unless he was ready to tell Dad himself. I called Mom from the car. I asked if she and Dad were home and whether I could come over. She said of course and asked if everything was all right. I said no, but I'd explain when I got there.
Mom was at the kitchen table when I arrived. Dad was outside cleaning the grill. I told them both to sit down. I said Maren had been having an affair with Rhett for nearly a year and Dash had known and helped them use the lake house. I showed them the cleaning dates.
I told them what Maren had admitted and what Dash had said that morning. I didn't give them every detail of my marriage. They didn't need it. I did tell Dad about the invoices because that part affected his company. Dad walked to the window.
He asked if Dash had admitted billing problems and which jobs were involved. I said Dash hadn't named them. Dad asked whether Rhett had threatened to release records. I said Dash had implied it, but I hadn't seen anything myself. Mom cried.
She'd asked Dash a month earlier why the cleaners were coming so often. He'd said contractors were staying near a job site. She hadn't asked which ones. Dad called Dash while I was there. Dash didn't answer.
Dad left a message telling him to come to the office Monday morning and bring the records for every Rhett Mallory subcontract invoice from the past two years. He didn't mention the affair on the voicemail. He sounded like he used to when something had gone wrong at the shop. I asked Dad not to push me to fix things with Dash. He promised he wouldn't.
Mom looked like she wanted to ask about Maren, but she didn't. The next few weeks were ugly in a quiet way. There wasn't a big scene in the street. Maren sent messages asking whether we could talk. Sometimes I answered practical questions about the house.
Sometimes I didn't answer until the next day because I couldn't bear another conversation about what she was feeling. She told me she'd ended things with Rhett. I didn't have a way to verify that, and I didn't ask for one. By then, the question wasn't whether she could stop. It was whether I wanted to be married to her after knowing what she'd done.
I didn't. We met once at a coffee shop to discuss bills and what to tell people. She looked tired. She said she knew I'd probably never trust her again, but she wanted me to know the affair hadn't meant she stopped loving me. She asked whether I hated her.
I said I was angry and I was hurt, but I wasn't spinning my days trying to hate her. I just couldn't live with her anymore. Dad kept me informed without pulling me into the investigation. One replacement unit had been billed as installed before it reached the site. On another job, the hours charged didn't match the site access logs.
Dad hired an outside accountant and a business attorney. He wouldn't call it theft, but he took away Dash's authority to approve Rhett's invoices. Dash called me the night Dad told him. I let it go to voicemail." He said I had no idea how hard he'd work to keep the company afloat through a bad year.
He said Rhett had been doing them favors when other subcontractors wouldn't return calls. A week after that, Mom invited me to dinner. I went because I missed her cooking and because I didn't want the rest of my family to disappear along with my marriage. Dash wasn't there. Dad had made sure of that.
We ate meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Mom asked about work. Dad complained about a new phone he'd bought. It was awkward at first, then it wasn't. After dinner, Mom asked if she could say something about Dash.
I told her she could, but I wasn't promising to do anything with it. She said he'd called her crying. He'd told her he'd made a terrible mistake and didn't know how to get out of it once Rhett started pressuring him. I asked when he started pressuring him. Mom said she didn't know.
I said Dash had known about the affair since last summer. Whatever was happening at work, he'd had months to come to Dad. He'd chosen to keep handing over the key. Dad came back from taking out the trash and told us the company review was taking longer than expected. He'd put a senior supervisor in charge of approving new subcontract work and he was spending more time at the office than he wanted.
He was angry with Dash and worried about him. I understood both. I asked Dad whether the company was going to be okay. He said he didn't know yet, but he had enough cash to pay employees and keep current jobs going while they sorted through the records. He said the last thing he wanted was to make innocent people pay for decisions they hadn't made.
The review found unsupported charges on a handful of subcontract jobs. When a major customer paid late, Dash had been afraid Rhett would pull his crews and leave the company unable to finish two contracts. So, he approved early payments against work Rhett hadn't completed. That bought time, but it also drained cash they didn't have and Dash never properly reconciled the invoices when the jobs changed. Months later, the records still showed payments nobody could justify.