Chapter 4: Following the Route
The first thing Phoebe did was make a copy.
Not because she expected Rowan to take the tablet, or because she thought Gideon would let him. Because the screen held one version of the truth, and she had learned not to trust a truth that existed in only one place.
The house had gone quiet around her. Leo slept in his bassinet, one fist tucked beneath his cheek. Gideon stood near the window in his old gray coat, hands in his pockets. Rowan remained on the sofa, watching Phoebe’s fingers move across the laptop.
She opened the account records and laid the three transfers side by side. The figures, dates, and memo lines aligned into a route she could follow. Two payments had gone through Cedar Bridge Consulting. The third pointed to Selina directly.
The first Cedar Bridge memo read: Quarterly records reconciliation.
The second: Administrative reconciliation—continuation.
Phoebe tapped the words with one finger.
“Do you know what work those describe?”
Rowan leaned forward, then stopped himself from coming closer. “Mom said Cedar Bridge was helping with her business.”
“With what, specifically?”
“Vendor records, I think. Scheduling. That kind of thing.”
“Did you see a report? A schedule? A reconciled ledger?”
His eyes dropped to the table.
“I didn’t ask.”
Phoebe searched the household files and the folders she had kept for their joint accounts. No contract. No report. No deliverables. No note from a consultant. She searched again, not because she expected the work to appear, but because the absence needed to be more than a feeling.
Nothing.
“These descriptions don’t match any service I can verify,” she said.
Rowan rubbed both hands over his face. “I thought the invoices were legitimate.”
“You said they were temporary help.”
“I did.”
“Help with what?”
He looked at the laptop. “Her business was struggling. She told me she needed time to catch up with some vendors. I thought the invoices were for work she’d already had done.”
“You thought. You never checked.”
“No.”
The answer came quickly, but it did not make the room feel any lighter.
Phoebe opened the transaction details. The first approval had been entered at 8:16 p.m. on a Thursday. The second, three weeks later, at 7:52 p.m. Both timestamps were visible in the account history.
She turned to the messages on her phone and searched the dates.
At 8:12 p.m. on the first Thursday, Rowan had texted: Home. Mom’s sending me the vendor paperwork. Can you tell me where we put the blue folder?
At 7:49 p.m. on the second date: I’m at the kitchen table dealing with Mom’s stuff. Don’t let me forget to call the plumber tomorrow.
Small, ordinary messages. The kind that had once vanished into the clutter of a shared life. Now they sat beside the approvals, precise as pins on a map.
“You were home when both payments went through,” Phoebe said.
Rowan’s shoulders tightened. “Yes.”
“You were at the kitchen table.”
“Yes.”
“You approved them.”
“I already told you I did.”
“You told me you approved two payments. You didn’t say you were sitting here, with the paperwork, while the money moved.”
“I wasn’t trying to hide that.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
His jaw worked. “I was ashamed.”
Phoebe looked back at the messages. Shame could make a person go quiet. It could not turn silence into an answer.
“I need to know what you actually saw,” she said. “Not what you wish you’d checked. Not what you think your mother meant. What was in front of you?”
He stared at the table for so long that Gideon shifted by the window. The faint rustle of his coat carried across the room.
“Two invoices,” Rowan said at last. “One each time. Mom said the company handled administrative support for her events. I thought she’d used them before.”
“Did you recognize the company?”
“No.”
“Did you ask who owned it?”
“No.”
“Did you ask what Cedar Bridge had done?”
“No.”
The admission left him looking smaller, though he was still the person who had sat at the kitchen table and approved the money.
Phoebe folded her arms against the dull ache in her back. “Then don’t tell me you knew the invoices were legitimate. Tell me you chose to trust your mother without checking.”
His mouth opened, then closed.
“That’s what I did,” he said.
The words changed nothing about the money. But they landed differently from his earlier explanation. For the first time, he wasn’t asking her to mistake his intention for evidence.
Leo made a thin, unsettled sound in the bassinet. Phoebe glanced over. His eyelids fluttered, then settled. Gideon stayed where he was, letting her decide whether to move.
She returned to the laptop.
Cedar Bridge’s registration record took only a few minutes to find. The company name appeared in plain black type above a filing address. Phoebe copied the address into the search bar, then opened the contact page for Selina’s event business.
The address was there, printed beneath the business name.
She checked the street number again. Then the suite.
The same.
For a moment, the room seemed to lose its edges. The laptop fan whispered. Somewhere in the kitchen, the refrigerator clicked off.
“Rowan,” she said.
He came to his feet. “What?”
Phoebe turned the screen toward him.
He read the company’s registered address. His expression shifted, not into surprise exactly, but into the wary stillness of someone recognizing a door he had hoped was closed.
“Is that where your mother’s business is registered?” Phoebe asked.
He didn’t answer.
Gideon left the window and came to stand behind her chair. He still didn’t speak. His presence was not a solution; it was simply one more person in the room who would hear Rowan’s answer.
Phoebe clicked between the two records. Cedar Bridge Consulting. Selina’s event business. One address.
May you like
The anonymous route had reached a real place.
And the place belonged to someone Rowan had spent a lifetime choosing to trust.
