My little bookkeeping business.
I stared at those words before dropping the invitation onto the enormous reclaimed-walnut desk in my office.
Sunlight streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Chicago River. Beyond the glass, the city moved with its usual relentless energy, filled with people building careers, making decisions, and pursuing opportunities.
Inside my family, however, time had apparently stopped eight years earlier.
I was not a bookkeeper.
I was the founder and principal investigator of Clearwater Forensics, a specialized forensic accounting firm that investigated sophisticated corporate fraud, embezzlement, and financial misconduct.
My company had grown into a respected operation whose work made dishonest executives across the Midwest extremely uncomfortable.
But my parents and sister had never bothered to learn what I actually did.
To them, I remained the disgraced daughter who had failed at a legitimate corporate career.
The girl who supposedly couldn’t handle professional pressure.
The unstable twenty-four-year-old who had embarrassed the family.
