Chapter 7: The Morning After
Lily woke up asking for toast.
That was the first thing.
Toast with butter, no jam, cut in triangles.
The specific demands of a four-year-old who had slept ten hours and remembered nothing of the night before.
I made the toast.
I cut it in triangles.
I sat across from her at the small table in our quarters and watched her eat and thought about the fact that I still had a job to do.
The estate was quiet in a way it wasn't usually quiet.
The catering company had cleared out by two in the morning.
The ballroom had been reset.
The flowers were still in their vases.
The white linen had been replaced.
But the staff moved differently.
Careful.
Watching each other.
By nine o'clock, I had been asked three times by three different colleagues what I had seen.
I said the same thing each time: I don't know more than you do.
At ten, Mrs.
Okafor found me in the upstairs linen corridor.
"He wants to see you," she said.
"Mr.
Cross.
His office.
Eleven o'clock."
"All right," I said.
"Elena." She put her hand on my arm.
"Whatever happens in there — you did the right thing last night."
I nodded.
I didn't tell her that I had spent the night lying awake thinking about Vanessa's words in the corridor.
Stability becomes fragile.
I had a daughter.
I had a job.
I had a small room in a beautiful house that did not belong to me, and I had spent five years being very careful not to forget that.
At eleven, I knocked on the office door.
"Come in."
Nathaniel was behind his desk.
He looked like a man who had not slept.
The tuxedo was gone.
Gray shirt, sleeves rolled.
Coffee cup.
Papers.
Patricia Hale was seated across from him.
I had not expected that.
"Sit down, Elena," he said.
I sat.
"Patricia has been here since eight," he said.
"We've been going through the foundation records.
What she brought last night is the beginning, not the end.
The full picture is worse than what was in those folders."
"How much worse?" I said.
Patricia set a single sheet of paper on the desk and slid it toward me.
I looked at the number at the bottom.
"That's the total," she said.
"Across all redirected transfers, over fourteen months."
The number was not two hundred and thirty thousand.
It was significantly more.
"The board chair is convening an emergency meeting this afternoon," Nathaniel said.
"Gerald has already been in contact with a forensic accounting firm.
And the foundation's legal counsel is reviewing whether to refer the matter to the state attorney's office."
I set the paper down.
"Why are you telling me this?" I said.
He looked at me.
"Because you were part of it.
Whether you wanted to be or not, you were standing in that corridor last night.
You heard what you heard.
You came and told me." He paused.
"And because Vanessa made a threat to you.
Gerald told me what you said."
"I didn't say anything to Gerald."
"You told Patricia what Vanessa said in the corridor.
Patricia told Gerald."
I looked at Patricia.
She did not look apologetic.
"She told you that your stability was fragile," Nathaniel said.
"That was a threat.
I want you to know that it has no basis.
Your position here is not at risk because of anything that happened last night.
The opposite, in fact."
I sat with that for a moment.
"She also said she was owed the money," I said.
"She believed it.
I could hear it."
"I know," he said.
"That doesn't make it right."
"No," he said.
"It doesn't."
He picked up his coffee cup.
Set it down without drinking.
"There's one more thing," he said.
"Vanessa's attorney called Gerald this morning.
She's claiming that the USB drive was never in the desk.
She's saying it doesn't exist.
That we fabricated the claim to discredit her."
"Gerald photographed the inside of the drawer," I said.
"An empty drawer," Nathaniel said.
"She's saying it was always empty.
That we're lying."
I thought about the corridor.
Her voice.
The phone call.
"She told someone to take it and get rid of it," I said.
"I heard her."
"I know," he said.
"But right now it's your word against hers."
The office was very quiet.
"Is there a camera in the west corridor?" I asked.
Nathaniel looked at me.
May you like
Then he looked at Gerald Marsh, who had been standing near the window so quietly I had almost forgotten he was there.
Gerald picked up his phone.
