I thought about Megan, too. I knew almost nothing about her except that she had trusted a man with sixty thousand dollars after a divorce and apparently never received it back. I imagined what it might feel like to lose a marriage, begin rebuilding, then lose the settlement intended to help you start over. If I'd heard her story before meeting Rachel, I would have said somebody should have warned her. Now I had a chance to warn another woman, and the fact that the woman was Clare didn't make the right answer easier.
I called Dana and told her what I'd learned. She listened without interrupting, then asked me to send copies of the documents Rachel had given me, subject to Rachel's permission. She reminded me that allegations about James were not the same as findings, and that we should avoid making accusations we couldn't prove. But she said the account information and the request to funnel settlement money into a third party's business would be relevant to negotiating secure payment terms. I asked whether a judge would even care that Clare intended to invest unwisely, and Dana answered that grown adults were allowed to make bad financial decisions.
"Our responsibility is to make sure your settlement is lawful and clearly documented," she said. "After that, we cannot run Clare's life. We can refuse to participate in a transfer that creates unnecessary risk for either of you, and we can insist she receives her own funds first. That's not control. That's good practice."
I told her I wanted to warn Clare once, directly, without threatening her or bargaining for her return. Dana agreed that a brief factual message was better than a long argument about James's character. We worked through several drafts while I sat at my table, deleting sentences that sounded righteous or wounded. In the end, what remained was almost embarrassingly simple. "Before you give James any money, ask him to show you the signed lease for the wine bar. If he has one, I'll never bring it up again."
I stared at the screen before pressing send. I thought about writing that I had met his wife, but I didn't know whether Rachel was ready for James to learn she'd been gathering evidence. I thought about attaching the rental statements, then remembered the children and the divorce case Rachel was preparing. It wasn't my place to put her entire life into a text exchange with someone who had already dismissed my concerns. I sent the question about the lease because Clare could verify it herself. She did not have to believe me to ask for a document.
Her response arrived almost immediately. "Wow. Jealous already? James said you'd try something like this. He said you'd do anything to make him look bad."