Refrigerator.
The faint scrape of Emma opening the cookie tin.
My breath.
Arthur’s clock.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“Since when?”
“Last August.”
Last August.
I remembered last August. Emma had stayed with me for three days while Serena attended something called a leadership retreat. Wesley had come by with flowers. He had hugged me too long. I thought grief had finally softened him.
No.
He had needed documents.
“How much?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“How much?”
“About eighty-four thousand through that line. Not all spent. Some moved. Some collateralized.”
The words meant little and everything.
“What happens now that I’ve stopped it?”
His silence answered first.
Then he said, “It triggers review.”
Serena opened the front door without knocking.
Her face was different now.
The polish had cracked.
“Wesley,” she said. “Outside. Now.”
He stood slowly.
I did too.
“Did you know?” I asked her.
She stared at me. “Know what?”
“That my son forged my authorization.”
Wesley turned. “Mom—”
Serena’s eyes went to him.
There. Not surprise.
Calculation.
Then fury, not at the crime, but at its exposure.
“You told her?”
I sat back down.
My legs had decided without consulting me.
Wesley looked sick.
Serena shut the door behind her.
Emma appeared in the pantry doorway with a cookie in each hand.
No one spoke.
Serena saw her daughter and adjusted her face.
“Emma, go to the car.”
Emma looked at me.
I nodded once, though it hurt.
“Take your rabbit,” I said.
She came to hug me first……………..
