CHAPTER 27 Reid
Reid
Reid sat with his hands flat against the metal table and confessed.
The prosecutor crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows.
Reid finished outlining exactly how he had supposedly embezzled the money.
Silence followed.
“Agent Lawson,” the prosecutor said. “ I don’t believe you.”
Reid thought he had been ready for the consequences. He hadn’t been ready to be dismissed so easily.
“I moved the funds through secondary shell accounts attached to the charity infrastructure grants,” he said firmly. “I used dormant vendor pathways to conceal the transfers temporarily before reallocating the money offshore.”
The prosecutor pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, you didn’t.”
Reid held her gaze. “I did.”
She leaned back in his chair with the expression of a woman developing a stress headache in real time.
“Lawson,” she said flatly, “you’re only wasting my time and yours.”
Reid looked at her. “My wife is innocent.”
The prosecutor closed the file sharply. “We are done here.”
Reid’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“Oh, I understand perfectly.” The prosecutor sighed. “You feel responsible for what happened to your wife and you’ve decided to self-destruct about it.”
“I’m confessing,” he said. “To a crime I committed.”
She looked annoyed. “This is unethical and professionally suicidal.”
Reid closed his eyes briefly. Worse than that, he thought. It wasn’t even helpful to Maya.
Reid thought about handcuffs and holding cells.
“Right,” she said finally. “Well. Fortunately for everyone involved, your confession is complete bullshit. I’m not even going to file it.”
The prosecutor shook her head. Then she stood, and walked away.
The video call connected.
The therapist smiled at him. “Why have you reached out for therapy today?”
Reid didn’t hesitate.
“I arrested my wife for a crime she didn’t commit,” he said.
The therapist blinked in surprise.
“Okay,” she said carefully. “That sounds like a very intense situation.”
“She’s being advised to plead guilty,” Reid went on. “To avoid prison.”
There was a brief silence.
“And how are you feeling about that?” she asked.
Reid stared at her.
“That can’t happen,” he said.
She nodded slowly. “It sounds like you’re experiencing a lot of distress. Guilt, maybe. Anxiety—”
“She’s innocent,” Reid said.
“I hear that,” the therapist said gently. “And what parts feel like they are in your control?”
Reid’s jaw tightened.
“It’s all in my control,” he said.
She tilted her head slightly. “It sounds like you’re taking on full responsibility for a complex situation. That’s something you can both work through together—”
“She doesn’t need to do any work,” Reid said. “I made a mistake. She’s dealing with the consequences.”
The therapist narrowed her eyes.
“In most relationships,” she said, “repair involves both parties engaging. Communication, boundaries, accountability on both sides—”
Reid laughed. “My wife didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “She doesn’t need boundaries. She doesn’t need to grow from this. She doesn’t need to process her role in it.” His voice roughened. “She needed her husband to believe her.”
“That’s not how change works,” she said gently.
“This isn’t useful,” he said.
“Sir—”
“She doesn’t need to heal from this,” he said. “She needs me to change. This isn’t helping”
He didn’t wait for a response.
Reid walked because he couldn’t sit still.
The neighborhood stretched around him in the soft gold of late afternoon, lawns humming with sprinklers, porch flags shifting in the breeze, flyers for the community picnic taped inside shop windows.
Everywhere he looked, there was Maya.
This was the community Maya had poured her time and energy into, homes with ramps she had installed, buildings she had made usable, fundraisers she had organized and problems she had carried like they were her own.
And the community had turned on her.
He had dressed cowardice up as principle and called it objectivity because that was easier than admitting the truth: when it mattered, when his wife had needed him, he had trusted his own insecurities more than he trusted her.
He had to do something. Anything.
He didn’t want to go home. The house was nothing without her. He sat on the bench, pulled out his phone.
There were hundreds of comments on the app.
His jaw tightened as he moved through them.
This. This was something he could do. He could tell every single person who had commented about his wife, that they were wrong.
She had us all fooled.
Reid tapped out a reply.
She did not fool anyone. I was wrong.
—Reid Lawson
He hit send.
My friend donated to that charity last year. I feel sick.
Reid tapped again.
You donated to a legitimate organization that has improved accessibility in this community. That work was real. The conclusions about fraud were not.
—Reid Lawson
Send.
Scroll.
Even her husband knew something was wrong.
Reid’s fingers stilled for a fraction of a second, then replied in third person.
Her husband was wrong. He was an incompetent fool.
It felt oddly dehumanizing but maybe he should be dehumanized. He hadn’t acted like a man.
The comments were increasing now, replies branching off his earlier responses, notifications stacking up.
He was going to answer every last one. Reid leaned forward slightly, elbows braced on his knees, phone held steady in both hands.
He needed to correct people’s misperceptions. Line by line, statement by statement. Every false thing that had been said about her.
He would answer all of it.
Across the street, was the sports center. The ramp there was one of Maya’s latest improvements.
Maya had worked on that for months. The permits, the councillors, scraping together the money.
And now she was the one being told to take a deal, to tell the community she was guilty.
He wouldn’t stand for that. Not his wonderful, caring, giving wife. He needed everyone to know that she was the best person he’d met. He needed everyone to know that she would never steal that money.
He opened his contacts. He would start with her lawyer.