Chapter 6
Grant enlarged the authorization until the letters broke into little squares.
The signature beneath Lenora’s permission looked like his. That was what made his stomach tighten. Not because he recognized it, but because the person who’d made it knew what he wanted the rest of the world to recognize.
Audrey stood beside him at the dining table, Caleb asleep against her shoulder. The house was quiet except for the soft hiss of the radiator. On Grant’s phone, his name ended in a long, looping flourish.
“I don’t sign like that anymore,” he said.
He crossed to the desk and opened a drawer, searching beneath a stack of old envelopes and the paper scraps he’d been meaning to sort. Audrey watched him move, her eyes tired but alert.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something she could’ve copied.”
He found the card at the bottom of a box of holiday things, its folded edges gone soft with age. His mother’s handwriting filled the front: To my wonderful boy. Love, Mom. Inside, Grant had written a brief thank-you. His signature, in black ink, ended in the same sweeping curl.
He set the card beside the authorization.
The flourish matched.
Audrey bent over them, careful not to shift Caleb. “She had that card?”
“Probably. She kept everything.”
Grant felt an old, foolish tenderness rise in him—the kind that arrived with the smell of cedar from the box, with memories of his mother saving his school drawings and tucking them behind the glass in the kitchen. Then he looked at the false authorization again.
The tenderness didn’t disappear. It simply stopped being an excuse.
“She copied it,” he said.
Audrey pressed her lips together. “And Tessa knew.”
“She said she knew the signature was false.” Grant looked at the message on Audrey’s phone. “That doesn’t tell us what she did with it.”
“No,” Audrey said. “It doesn’t.”
She laid Caleb in his bassinet, drew the blue blanket up around him, and reached for her coat. “I’m meeting her.”
Grant’s first instinct was to go with her. His second was to ask if she was sure. He swallowed both.
“Call me if you want me there.”
“I will.”
The next morning, Audrey chose the bakery café where she and Tessa had spoken before. Sunlight came through the front windows in cold white bars, catching on the rims of the mugs and the sugar scattered by the napkin dispenser. She picked a table where the door stayed in view.
Tessa arrived with no purse, only her phone and a folded paper napkin twisted tight in one hand. She sat across from Audrey and studied her face.
“Did you show Grant?”
“Yes.”
Tessa nodded once. “I figured.”
“His signature was copied from an old holiday card.”
Tessa’s grip tightened around the napkin. “Lenora said she had his approval.”
Audrey let the silence sit. Tessa’s cheeks reddened, but she didn’t look away.
“I uploaded it,” Tessa said. “The authorization. Lenora emailed it to me and told me Grant had already agreed. She said he’d signed something years ago, and she needed me to attach it to the booking file.” Tessa swallowed. “I saw the signature. I thought it was strange, but I didn’t ask him. I wanted to believe her.”
“Why?”
“Because the bookings were moving fast. Because she told me everything was settled. Because I needed the work.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She folded the napkin in half, then in half again. “That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No,” Audrey said. “It doesn’t.”
Tessa flinched, as if bracing for what came next.
Audrey kept her voice low. “If someone asks, I won’t say you had nothing to do with it. You uploaded the form. But I won’t let Lenora make you the only person responsible when she was the one who told you Grant had consented.”
Tessa’s eyes shone. She looked down at the tiny white squares she’d folded into the napkin.
“That’s fair,” she whispered.
“It’s the truth.”
“I can probably get the booking records back. The deposits, the client messages, the dates. They’re on Lenora’s account, but I used my login to upload the authorization.” Tessa glanced toward the window. “I didn’t think she’d turn on me.”
Audrey heard the scrape of a chair behind her and a child’s laugh near the counter. Ordinary sounds, almost startling in a conversation that seemed to have no room for ordinary things.
“What would it take to get them?” she asked.
“Access to my work email. Maybe the office computer.” Tessa hesitated. “I haven’t looked since the party. I didn’t want to know what else she’d asked me to do.”
The admission cost her. Audrey could see it in the way Tessa’s shoulders slumped after she said it.
“You don’t have to make it easy for me,” Audrey said. “Just don’t delete anything.”
Tessa’s phone rang.
She stared at the screen. “Lenora.”
Audrey didn’t answer for her. She didn’t tell her to pick up or to let it go. Tessa’s hand hovered, then touched the screen.
“What?”
Lenora’s voice was sharp enough that Audrey could hear it across the small table.
“Are you with Audrey?”
Tessa’s eyes flicked toward her. She didn’t lie.
“I’m talking to her.”
“Then listen carefully. Delete every file you have—the authorization, the booking sheets, every message. I want it done before morning.”
Tessa went very still. “You told me Grant had approved it.”
“I told you what you needed to know.”
“No. You told me he signed.”
A pause. The café’s warmth pressed close around Audrey, but Tessa’s face seemed to go pale in the clear daylight.
“You work for me,” Lenora said. “And you will do what I ask.”
“Not this time.”
The words came out thin, but they came out.
Lenora’s voice dropped. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
Tessa ended the call.
For a second, neither woman spoke. Tessa set her phone facedown on the table, then moved it toward herself again, as if even turning it over couldn’t make it harmless.
“She told me to delete everything,” she said.
Audrey felt anger flare—at Lenora, at the nerve of the demand, at the way Tessa’s hands had started shaking. She didn’t reach across the table. Tessa hadn’t asked her to.
“Will you?” Audrey asked.
“No.” Tessa drew a breath that shuddered on the way in. “I can find the records. I can send what I’m allowed to access.”
It wasn’t absolution. It wasn’t a promise that everything would be repaired. But it was a choice Tessa had made while Lenora was still on the line.
Her phone buzzed again.
Tessa glanced down, and all the color left her face. The message was short, sent from Lenora’s number.
May you like
I know where your daughter lives.
Tessa’s hand closed around the phone. Outside the window, a car turned slowly into the parking lot.
