Chapter 6
By late morning, grief had settled into my body like a fever I couldn’t sweat out. I could feel it in my fingers as Raymond drove us across town, Chloe’s urn wrapped in a blanket on the seat between us.
“I can wait in the lobby,” he said. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I know.” I looked at the pale buildings sliding past the window. “I need to see what they’re changing.”
The Fairchild family office occupied three floors of a glass tower that reflected the city back at itself—clean, shining, and impossible to read. I had been inside dozens of times, usually with a folder of household statements or a question about a charge no one could explain. Back then, I’d believed the people behind the polished desks were keeping our lives in order.
The receptionist recognized me. Her eyes flicked toward the blanket in Raymond’s arms, then away.
“I need my personal files from the archive,” I said. “The ones I left here before Chloe was born.”
She hesitated. “I’ll check with Ms. Ximena.”
“Of course you will.”
Raymond stayed in the lobby with Chloe. Before I followed the receptionist down the hall, I looked back at the urn in his arms. He held it carefully, as if he understood that a small thing could weigh more than a person could bear.
Ximena’s assistant led me to a records room with two terminals and a long counter. A wall clock ticked above a row of locked cabinets. My old viewer profile still worked, though the household account Brendan had suspended did not. The screen offered a restricted archive with the same plain columns I remembered: date, amount, account, status.
My hands steadied as soon as the records appeared.
For years, I had looked for risk in numbers that seemed ordinary until you put them beside each other. A loss could be buried in a footnote. A change could hide inside a field no one thought to check. Brendan could tell his family I was confused, but he couldn’t make me forget how to read a ledger.
I opened Raymond’s retained statement and found the care-reserve reallocation. Beside it sat a transaction code: 6C-19.
I entered the code in the archive search.
One result appeared: Approval History — 6C-19.
The hair lifted along my arms. I opened the record. The entry showed a sequence of reviews and a final status change, but the viewer clipped the details unless I opened the approval panel. I leaned closer, reading each field before touching anything.
Then my phone vibrated.
A message from Brendan had landed in the Fairchild family group thread. I was still on it, though no one had asked if I wanted to remain.
Please give Nora room right now. She is grieving and understandably struggling to process events clearly. Don’t engage her in conversations about family finances or Chloe’s care.
A moment later, a relative replied with a prayer-hands emoji.
I stared at the screen until the letters blurred. Brendan had found a way to speak for me again, only now the thing he was managing wasn’t an account. It was what everyone believed before I had a chance to say a word.
I locked my phone.
The approval panel opened. I set my phone against the terminal’s edge and photographed the screen. The first image was blurry. I took another, widening the frame to capture the code, the review sequence, and the status change. My camera clicked softly.
“Mrs. Fairchild.”
Ximena stood in the doorway. Her expression was composed, but her gaze had gone straight to my phone.
I lowered it. “I’m retrieving my personal files.”
“You’re photographing restricted records.”
“I’m photographing a record connected to the care reserve.”
“You’re not authorized to review approval logs.”
“You gave me access to the archive.”
“To retrieve your own files. Not to copy confidential business records.”
I turned the terminal so she could see the code. “This matches the transfer on a statement Raymond kept. The one you told me didn’t identify who moved the money.”
Something shifted in her face—a tightening around the eyes, gone almost before I could name it.
“That code is not evidence of anything,” she said.
“Then you won’t mind explaining what it links to.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“No. You owe one to the person whose care reserve was changed.”
A red flush appeared along her throat. She looked past me toward the hall, where the assistant had stopped pretending not to listen.
“Security,” Ximena said. “Please escort Mrs. Fairchild from the records area.”
The two guards arrived quickly, their shoes quiet on the carpet. One stepped toward the terminal.
“Don’t touch it,” I said. “I’ve already photographed the screen.”
Ximena’s eyes met mine. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
“I didn’t make the request stay pending.”
The guards walked me out without touching me. Ximena followed as far as the lobby.
“Brendan wants to protect you,” she said, soft enough that Raymond couldn’t hear from across the room.
I stopped beside him. “From what?”
She didn’t answer. The receptionist’s eyes dropped to her keyboard. Raymond rose, Chloe still held close against his chest, and Ximena stepped aside to let us pass.
Outside, my phone buzzed again. Claire’s name appeared, followed by a photograph.
Don’t call, she wrote. I can’t talk here.
I enlarged the image.
It showed a ledger page, the paper gray with age and shadow. A row of figures ran beneath a handwritten note. My eyes found the transaction code first: 6C-19. Then the initials beside it.
Ximena’s.
May you like
Beside her initials was a second reviewer’s signature. It was partly cut off by the edge of the photograph, but the ink was unmistakable.
Ximena had not reviewed the transfer alone.
