Chapter 4 - What Hannah Left Behind
I called the police before I called Mara back into the room.
Some fears become larger when you speak them.
Others become dangerous when you don’t.
An officer arrived that evening, took my statement, and asked me to preserve the message without replying. He couldn’t tell me who had sent it. He could tell me that whoever had taken the photograph wanted me to believe they were close.
That was enough.
Tessa stood on the stairs listening.
I saw her before she could retreat.
“Come down,” I said.
Her face had gone pale.
“This is because of your work?”
“Yes.”
“Are they going to hurt us?”
“I don’t know who sent it. The police are looking into it. Tonight, we’re staying with Grandma and Grandpa.”
She looked at Mara.
“Are you coming?”
Mara hesitated.
“I can arrange somewhere else.”
Tessa’s mouth tightened.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
We spent the night in June and Frank’s house.
Mara slept in the guest room.
I lay on the den couch beneath a quilt Rebecca had helped her mother finish when she was sixteen.
Around two, I heard footsteps.
Mara stood in the doorway holding a mug.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Join the club.”
She sat in the armchair.
For several minutes, we listened to the old heating system clank through its cycle.
Then she said, “I let Everett become the person who explained everybody else to me.”
I turned toward her.
“Employees who were upset. Projects that were late. Numbers that didn’t fit. He always had an explanation.”
“And you had a company to run.”
“That was my excuse.”
She stared into her tea.
“I told myself I was efficient. Sometimes I was simply absent.”
I appreciated that she wasn’t asking me to rescue her from the truth.
“My wife used to say I could fix a radiator faster than I could admit I was scared.”
“Was she right?”
“Embarrassingly often.”
Mara smiled faintly.
In the morning, Denise called.
Hannah Mercer had contacted the independent investigators after hearing that I was accused. She wanted to speak with them, but she was frightened.
She also wanted me to know she had tried to correct the work order.
“Tell her I believe her,” I said.
“I’ll pass that along.”
Hannah met the investigators that afternoon with her own lawyer.
We learned only what they were willing to share, and only after her interview.
She had noticed payments going to Bellwether Mechanical for equipment that had no shipping records. When she questioned them, Everett told her the vendor was part of a confidential expansion project.
Then he asked her to process a batch retroactively.
She refused.
Three days later, HR opened an investigation into whether she had mishandled employee banking information.
She resigned after receiving a separation agreement and a warning about confidentiality.
“Did she sign it?” I asked Denise.
“Yes. Her lawyer is handling that.”
“And the invoices?”
“She retained emails she had lawfully received, including her written objection. The investigators have them.”
One of those emails mentioned a document archive.
Four years earlier, Alder Ridge had scanned its paper personnel files while changing payroll providers.
The vendor had stored signature samples with employee authorization forms.
My oldest form was dated six months before Rebecca died.
There it was.
The source of my borrowed handwriting.
I thought of somebody opening that old form, copying my name, and deciding I would be useful.
At dinner, I barely spoke.
Frank waited until Tessa left the table before joining me by the sink.
“You know Rebecca wouldn’t want you carrying this alone.”
I gripped the counter.
“I don’t want Tessa losing anything else.”
“She has you.”
“For now.”
Frank’s expression hardened.
“Don’t talk like they’ve already taken you.”
I looked away.
He placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Let the people who love you do their part.”
Behind him, Mara quietly cleared the table.
She didn’t pretend not to have heard.
That evening, an unfamiliar car stopped outside Frank’s house.
My heart climbed into my throat.
But the visitor was a courier.
He delivered a sealed packet addressed to Mara.
Inside was a copy of an email Everett had sent the board that morning.
He alleged she had developed an inappropriate personal relationship with me and had compromised an active fraud investigation.
Attached was another photograph.
This one showed us through my kitchen window.
Mara wearing the reindeer apron.
May you like
Tessa standing between us.
And someone had drawn a red circle around my daughter.
