I DIDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT
I kept seeing those babies.
Their eyes.
Their hair.
The way Marissa automatically turned her own body between them and the dust.
Twins do not appear from nowhere.
At three in the morning, I sat in bed using my phone calculator like mathematics might save me from the obvious.
I estimated their age.
Counted backward.
Once.
Again.
Then a third time.
There was only one possible window when those babies had been conceived.
Marissa had still been my wife.
My hands began shaking.
And suddenly, the folder Thomas had given me did not look like evidence anymore.
It looked like a story somebody had wanted me to believe.
I WENT TO PAULINE GRANT
Everybody at Carter Development called her Miss Paulie.
She had managed the office for nearly twenty years before reducing her hours.
She trained Marissa herself.
She had attended our wedding.
When I arrived at her house, Pauline was sitting on the porch shelling peas.
I barely finished telling her what I had seen.
Her hands stopped.
“Ethan.”
“What?”
“I need you to hear me carefully.”
She placed the bowl aside.
“I kept copies.”
My stomach tightened.
“Copies of what?”
“Everything from the month before Marissa was fired.”
SHE HAD NOT TRUSTED THE TRANSACTIONS
Pauline explained that several withdrawal authorizations had strange routing information.
She had asked Thomas about them.
Once.
Carefully.
Thomas told her:
“It’s handled.”
Pauline had been sixty-one.
Three years from retirement.
She was afraid asking too many questions might destroy her pension.
“So I kept quiet.”
She looked ashamed.
“But I kept the paperwork.”
“Why?”
She gave me a tired smile.
“A woman my age learns that when powerful men say something has been handled…”
She stood.
“…you make a copy.”
