Chapter 5
Mom told me to stay in the lobby.
She said it twice while she knelt in front of me and fixed the collar of my thin navy coat. My yellow rain boots were still on the wrong feet, and my stuffed rabbit was tucked under my arm with its repaired ear resting against my chin.
“You can see me from here,” she said.
I looked past her at the elevators and the polished hallway beyond them. “How long?”
“Not long.”
That was what grown-ups said when they didn’t know.
Marco Bellini stood beside the security desk in his dark suit. He held a visitor badge between two fingers and watched the elevator numbers change. He had a quiet face, but his eyes kept moving—to Mom, to the doors, to the people crossing the marble lobby.
Dominic stood several feet away. He hadn’t asked to come with Mom after she told him no.
“I can go in alone,” she had said.
“I know,” he answered.
“Then let me.”
He had paused before nodding. “Marco will be there.”
Mom looked at Marco. “As a witness, not a guard.”
Marco inclined his head. “That’s what I’ll be.”
Dominic’s eyes came to me. “Lily stays here.”
Mom’s hand tightened around mine for half a second, then let go. She and Marco entered the elevator. I watched the doors close between us.
I sat on one of the lobby chairs with my rabbit in my lap. Snow moved past the glass doors in thin, slanting lines. Dominic didn’t sit. He stayed near the elevator, tall enough that people glanced at him before looking away.
Once, he checked his watch.
Once, he looked at the elevator doors like he could see through them.
Upstairs, Mom walked through the office where she used to work. She told me about it later, but I could picture parts of it because she had described her desk before. A window. A metal filing cabinet. A small plant she had kept alive by forgetting about it and then watering it too much.
The desk had been emptied.
Her name was gone from the drawer. Her pens were gone. The little photograph of me at school pickup was gone too.
Someone had left one paper clip near the monitor.
Mom stood there without touching anything. Marco said the room smelled like cleaning spray, though the corners were dusty.
Then Mom remembered the maintenance drawer.
It was not part of her desk. It was a low drawer near the supply cabinets where employees kept spare cords, batteries, tape, and things nobody claimed. She had put personal items there because the main office had begun to feel watched.
The drawer held a scarf, two rubber bands, an old subway card, and a small cloth bag.
Inside the bag was her notebook.
When Mom returned to the lobby, she held it against her chest. The cover was bent at one corner. A gray smear marked the cloth bag.
I stood up. “Did you find it?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded different.
Dominic stepped closer, but he stopped before reaching for it. “What is it?”
“My notes.”
“May I see?”
Mom looked at him for a long moment. “Not yet.”
He nodded immediately. That made me look at him. Before, adults usually took things while saying they were only trying to help.
Mom opened the notebook herself at a page covered in small writing. There were vendor names, invoice numbers, dates, and amounts. Some lines had circles around them. Others had short marks beside them that looked like tiny doors.
“These payments were all made during preparation for the foundation event,” she said. “Different vendors. Same dates. Same approval route.”
Marco leaned in, careful not to touch the paper. “The event next month?”
Mom nodded. “The public one. The one the company has been announcing everywhere.”
Dominic’s expression hardened. “Why record this?”
“Because the numbers didn’t match the work.” She turned a page. “A lighting company billed twice. A catering deposit appeared before the contract. And this vendor”—she tapped a name—“was paid for equipment that never arrived.”
I held my rabbit tighter. The pages made a soft, dry sound as Mom turned them.
Then she stopped.
One page had been torn out.
The ragged edge ran close to the binding. Mom rubbed her thumb over it without speaking.
Marco looked toward the elevators. “Was it missing before?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I wrote on both sides.”
She closed the notebook.
Dominic’s voice stayed low. “Someone searched the drawer.”
Mom looked at the gray smear on the cloth bag. “They searched the desk first. Then they found this.”
For a moment, nobody moved. The lobby doors opened, and cold air pushed across the floor. A man in a wool coat hurried inside, shaking snow from his shoulders. The ordinary noise made the silence around us feel sharper.
Dominic held out his hand, not for the notebook, but toward Marco. “Scan every page.”
Mom’s head lifted. “I’ll decide what gets copied.”
“Yes,” Dominic said. “You will.”
That answer seemed to change something in her face. She sat beside me and opened the notebook again. Marco brought a small scanner from his briefcase, but he placed it on the table and waited.
Mom copied the pages herself. She included the invoice numbers, dates, vendor names, and the page with the torn edge. She did not copy the notebook’s personal notes about rent or school pickup. When she finished, she handed the scanned file to Marco.
“The original stays with me,” she said.
Marco accepted the drive. “Understood.”
Dominic looked at the marked dates. “The event is your deadline.”
Mom closed the cover. “It’s somebody else’s deadline too.”
I didn’t understand what she meant, but Dominic did. His gaze moved from the notebook to the elevators, then to the glass doors where the snow kept falling.
He didn’t ask Mom to hand it over.
He only said, “We find out who needed that page before the foundation event.”
Mom slipped the notebook inside her coat.
When we left the plaza, she held my hand tightly. Behind us, Dominic remained beneath the chandelier with Marco, watching the elevator doors.
May you like
The page was gone.
But now someone knew we had noticed.
