Chapter 7
Mom chose the diner because it had two entrances, a crowded parking lot, and a sheriff’s car that sometimes stopped near the gas pumps across the road.
She explained that part to me without looking scared. She was good at making dangerous things sound like weather.
“You’ll stay with Mrs. Ortiz,” Mom said, buttoning my navy coat. “She’ll pick you up from school, and you’ll go to her apartment until I come back.”
“Why can’t I go?”
“Because this meeting is for grown-ups.”
I held my rabbit against my chest. Its repaired ear brushed my chin. “Is the person mean?”
Mom stopped fastening my coat. For a second, her fingers stayed still.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s why we’re meeting in a busy place.”
Dominic stood near the apartment door, listening without interrupting. He wore a dark suit even though we were going outside the city, and his shoulders nearly filled the narrow entryway. Marco waited beside him with a folder tucked under one arm.
Dominic looked at me. “Mrs. Ortiz knows where you’ll be. Marco has the address. No one will take you anywhere else.”
Mom glanced at him, then at me. She didn't smile, but her hand found mine.
“Okay,” I said, because all three adults were watching me.
Mrs. Ortiz arrived ten minutes later in a gray sedan. She brought a paper bag with crackers and an apple. Mom kissed my forehead twice, then pulled back as if she wanted to say something more. Instead, she touched the rabbit’s repaired ear.
“Keep him safe,” she whispered.
I watched from Mrs. Ortiz’s back seat as Mom got into Dominic’s car. Marco sat behind the wheel. They followed the county road toward a roadside diner with a red sign and a row of trucks parked beside it.
I didn't see what happened inside. Mrs. Ortiz took me to her apartment, where I colored at the kitchen table and listened to her television talk about snow coming later. But Mom told me afterward, and I remembered the pieces because she spoke slowly, like each one had to be placed somewhere solid.
The former clerk was a woman named Dana, middle-aged, with a wool hat pulled low over her hair. She sat in a booth near the window, where she could see both the road and the diner’s front door. She kept one hand wrapped around a coffee cup she never drank from.
Marco placed a recorder on the table.
Dana looked at it. “I agreed to give a statement. I didn't agree to be trapped.”
“You’re not trapped,” Mom said. “You can leave whenever you want.”
Dominic sat beside Mom, not across from Dana. Mom said that mattered. He didn't lean in or ask questions in the voice that made people answer quickly. He let Marco explain that the statement could be written instead of recorded.
Dana took out a folded sheet of paper.
“They changed vendor totals after approval,” she said. “Not once. Several times. The original numbers were in the system, then replaced. I printed copies when I realized the approvals still showed the earlier amounts.”
Mom’s hand tightened around her pen.
“Who told you to change them?” she asked.
Dana shook her head. “Requests came through an office upstairs. A senior executive’s office. I never saw the person give the order.”
“Whose office?” Marco asked.
Dana looked toward Dominic, then down at the table. “I can't identify that from memory. There were assistants, runners, people using other people’s passwords. I won't guess.”
Dominic’s jaw moved once. “Then don't.”
Marco looked at him, surprised.
Dana continued. “After that, someone requested Elena’s termination template. They asked for the version with the company letterhead and authorization block. I thought it was for routine use.”
Mom’s breathing changed. I knew that sound. It was the one she made when she tried not to cry in front of me.
“Did you send it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you see the termination letter?”
“No. But the request came from the same office channel.”
Dana signed the statement with a hand that trembled only at the end. Marco made two copies, placed one in a clear sleeve, and sealed the other in the folder.
Dominic didn't ask for a name. He only said, “Thank you for telling the truth when it costs you something.”
On the drive home, Mom held the sealed statement in her lap. She stared at it as if it were both a door and a match.
“This is enough for a complaint,” she said.
“For a formal complaint,” Marco replied. “Not necessarily enough to prove who directed it.”
Mom looked out at the gray fields beyond the window. “If we file now, they’ll know we have this.”
Dominic turned slightly toward her. “They may already know.”
The car grew quiet.
Mom pressed her thumb against the plastic sleeve. “Then I need to decide whether being right is worth making Lily visible.”
No one answered for her.
When they returned, Mom came straight to Mrs. Ortiz’s apartment and knelt in front of me. Her face looked tired, but her voice was steady.
“We found something,” she said.
“Are we safe?”
She looked past me at Dominic standing in the hall. He didn't come closer.
“We’re being careful,” she said.
That wasn't the same answer, and I knew it.
That night, Mom put the witness statement in the locked drawer beside the folded termination letter. The forged letter remained unburned, its white creases holding the shape of every time she had opened it.
A charity event was coming soon. Dominic had received the invitation. Mom hadn't decided whether she would attend.
But now, somewhere behind the polished offices and bright public smiles, there was a written record connecting altered payments to the office that had reached for her job.
May you like
The person behind it still had no name.
The danger did.
