But something strange started happening.
On my fifth day at Opal’s, I was sweeping the front porch when I noticed a gray sedan parked across the street. Engine running. Tinted windows.
When I looked up, it pulled away.
Three days later, I saw it again. Same spot. This time, the driver’s window was down a few inches. A man in a baseball cap was holding up his phone.
Taking pictures of me.
I figured Trevor had hired somebody to keep tabs on me. Maybe to catch me doing something that would violate my post-release control and send me back.
But I didn’t have any proof.
So I did what I’d learned to do in prison. I wrote it down.
I bought a little spiral notebook at the CVS on High Street. I wrote down the date. The time. A partial license plate. GKT-4. The color of the car. The description of the man.
On my twelfth day, Opal asked me to sit down and eat dinner with her. At the table. Not in the kitchen.
She’d made chicken soup herself. Homemade noodles. She set out a basket of warm dinner rolls.
And while she was buttering a roll, she asked a question that froze the spoon in my hand.
“Rebecca, why were you in prison?”
I gripped my spoon so hard my knuckles went white.
I’d been asked that question by a hundred people. Lawyers. Guards. Other women in my unit. Employers who wouldn’t hire me.
I’d stopped answering it honestly a long time ago. Nobody ever believed me.
But Opal was looking at me like she actually wanted to know.
“Because my husband and my sister stole money using my name,” I said. “And then they convinced everybody that I was the one who did it.”
So I told her.
In the fall of 2019, Trevor’s mother, Loretta, got sick. Stage four ovarian cancer. She was only sixty-two.
Trevor couldn’t handle it. He said hospitals made him sick. So I was the one who sat with her. For seven weeks, I practically lived at the OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital. I slept in a recliner beside her bed. I held her hand through chemo. I barely went into the office.
During those seven weeks, a series of bank transfers went out of Buckeye Medical Supply’s operating account.
Fourteen transfers. To a vendor I’d never heard of. A company called Keystone Surgical Partners.
$1.4 million.
Every single transfer was authorized with my online banking login. From my user ID. With my security token.
When Loretta died in December, I came back to work and found the books didn’t add up. I asked Monica about it. She said she’d look into it.
Two weeks later, the FBI walked into my office.
Several of our clinic customers had been billed for supplies they never received, and the money had been funneled to Keystone. One of the clinics complained to the Ohio Attorney General. The Attorney General called the FBI.
When the investigation began, Trevor sat in front of federal agents and testified that I’d personally ordered the transfers.
Monica produced emails. Signed approval forms. Memos with my signature on them.
My lawyer couldn’t prove I didn’t send them. Everything came from my computer. My login. My name.
The jury took four hours.
Guilty on eleven counts of wire fraud.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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