Chapter 4
Mara answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Outside the foundation office. Don’t come through the front.”
The call ended before I could ask why.
Daniel drove. I sat beside him with Arthur’s statements tucked inside my dress, the stiff paper pressing against my ribs whenever I breathed too deeply. The wedding flowers were still pinned to my wrist. By the time we turned into the foundation’s rear lot, their white petals had begun to brown at the edges.
Mara waited beside a service door, her coat pulled tight though the afternoon was warm. She glanced at Daniel, then at the street behind us.
“Did anyone follow you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so isn’t the same as no.”
Daniel got out and looked down the block. “I’ll keep watch.”
Mara let us in. The corridor smelled of copier toner and old coffee. She led me to a records room crowded with filing cabinets, then shut the door and turned the lock.
“I shouldn’t have texted you,” she said.
“Then why did you?”
“Because I watched your father sign an instruction to move money that isn’t his.”
The words landed hard, but I kept my voice even. “The reserve?”
“Part of it. He wants it moved before the gala. The paperwork is already in the approval queue.”
“How much?”
“I can’t tell you that yet. I need to confirm which balance he’s using. The entries don’t agree.”
Mara looked exhausted, and not only from the day. A red mark crossed the bridge of her nose where her glasses had pressed. She opened a drawer and took out a thick ledger, then hesitated before placing it on the table between us.
“I’ve been reconciling these accounts for weeks,” she said. “I kept finding the same transactions twice.”
“Duplicated how?”
“Different descriptions. Different expense codes. Same dates, same amounts, same destination account.”
She turned the ledger toward me. Her finger stopped at a line item tagged as a restoration expense. Beneath it, in another column, an almost identical amount appeared as a temporary advance.
I knew the account number before I reached the last digits.
“Richard’s company,” I said.
Mara nodded. “I saw it in the tax records, too. It keeps showing up where it shouldn’t.”
My pulse quickened. The statement in my dress had led to Richard’s company; Mara’s ledger tied that destination to the foundation’s books. It didn’t tell me what had happened after the money arrived. But it made the trail harder to dismiss as a bad copy or a family misunderstanding.
“Why didn’t you bring this forward before?”
“I tried to raise the mismatch at a finance meeting. Your father said I was comparing unlike entries. Then he told the board the reconciliation was complete.”
“And you let it go?”
Her face tightened. “I have a mortgage. I have a son in college. I told myself I’d find a cleaner explanation before I risked both.”
She didn’t ask me to absolve her. That made it harder to judge her and easier to believe her.
Daniel came in from the corridor. “A car just pulled in.”
Mara’s color drained.
“Richard?” I asked.
“I didn’t see.”
A door slammed somewhere beyond the records room. Then came the measured tread of shoes down the hall.
Mara reached for the ledger. I lifted my phone.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “If he sees you taking pictures, he’ll say you stole the records.”
“He can say what he likes. I’m photographing what I’m allowed to see.”
“You’re not allowed to see any of this,” said a voice from the doorway.
Richard stood there with his jacket unbuttoned and his expression arranged into something like concern. His eyes moved from me to Daniel, then settled on the open ledger.
“Mara, step away from the records.”
She didn’t move.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I work here,” he said. “The better question is why you’re in a restricted room with an employee who has no authority to disclose confidential financial records.”
“Then tell me why the same amounts appear twice.”
“Those are accounting entries. They require context.”
“Your context?”
His mouth flattened. “You’re not an officer of the foundation.”
“No. I’m the person whose name keeps appearing in records I never received.”
“You have no idea what these records mean.”
“Then explain them.”
He stepped toward the table. Daniel shifted between him and Mara, not touching him, simply making the narrow room narrower.
Richard looked at him. “Move.”
“No.”
The word was quiet. It changed the air.
Richard turned back to me. “You’ve already caused enough damage today. Give Mara the ledger and leave.”
The old reflex rose in me: soften the question, make the room comfortable, wait until he was ready to answer. I recognized it for what it was—another entry in a long account, a cost I had paid because he preferred my silence.
I kept my phone angled over the open pages and took three photographs. Then I took two more, catching the dates and the account digits.
Richard reached for the ledger. Mara pulled it toward herself.
“Don’t,” she said.
His gaze sharpened. “You’re risking your job over this?”
“I’m risking it by lying about what I saw.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. The ceiling vent rattled above us. My thumb hovered over the shutter button, and the phone felt slippery in my palm.
Richard finally withdrew his hand. “Those records stay here.”
“They do,” I said. “I have photographs.”
“You think that makes you safe?”
“No.”
The answer seemed to surprise him more than defiance would have. I slipped the phone into my clutch, still recording nothing but the pages. “It makes the evidence harder to erase.”
His eyes flicked to the ledger again. “You don’t know what you’re accusing me of.”
“I know what I’m asking.”
He stepped into the doorway, blocking it without quite blocking it. “You should go home, Emma. This can still be handled within the family.”
Mara gave a small, disbelieving laugh. Richard glanced at her, and she stopped—but not before I heard the fear under it.
Daniel touched my elbow. Not a pull. A question.
I nodded. “We’re leaving.”
Richard moved aside at last. I passed close enough to catch the scent of his cologne, the same one that had lingered on my childhood report cards when he leaned over them to circle what I’d gotten wrong.
In the corridor, Mara followed us. She carried a single printout now, folded once and held tight in her fist.
“I can’t send you everything,” she whispered. “Not yet. But I can show you what I found today.”
She opened the page beneath the emergency light. A new transfer instruction sat at the bottom, timestamped that morning. The destination account matched the property-company account in the ledger.
May you like
My eyes went first to the amount, then to the reference line beneath it.
Repayment of loan authorized by Emma Stone.
