Chapter 3
The woman waiting in reception was Tessa Grant, a former billing clerk.
I remembered her leaving the clinic the previous spring. She had told Naomi she needed to care for her mother in another city. She looked nervous now, twisting the strap of her purse around her wrist.
“Can we talk where it’s private?” she asked.
I asked Maya to take Lily and my father to the reading corner. Lily had already opened the book she brought from home. She was reading its cover aloud, delighted by every word.
Tessa followed Naomi and me into the office.
“I need to tell you something I should have said months ago,” she began. “Clara came to see me when I still worked here.”
“Why?” Naomi asked.
“She said she was part of Daniel’s family and wanted to help with a charity event. Then she asked how refunds worked.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
“She knew you?”
“Only through your father. I met them at a clinic fundraiser.”
Tessa explained that Clara had kept asking questions over several visits. At first they sounded harmless. Which desk handled optical orders? Could families receive cash back? What happened if a person lost a receipt?
“I told her I couldn’t discuss accounts,” Tessa said. “But I answered general questions I shouldn’t have.”
“Did you give her access?” Naomi asked.
“No. I never gave her a password. A month after I left, she called to ask whether my old login still worked. I told her it had been closed.”
Naomi and I exchanged a look. Staff accounts were supposed to be disabled on the employee’s last day.
“Why did she think it might still work?” I asked.
Tessa’s eyes filled.
“She had seen me write a temporary password on a sticky note while I was training someone. I threw the note away, but she remembered the pattern.”
Naomi opened her laptop and checked the audit record. The override showed Tessa’s old login, not Maya’s. The display at the front desk had shown Maya as the current staff member assigned to the station, which explained the first mistake.
The account should never have been active.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa whispered.
“You came to tell us,” I said. “That matters. We’ll need your full statement.”
She nodded.
Naomi called our security officer and had every inactive account disabled and reviewed. I asked her to bring in an outside specialist to examine the system. Someone had used a weakness we should have closed long ago. I was responsible for fixing it.
When we finished, I found Lily at the reading table. She had reached the third page on her own.
“Listen,” she said, and read a sentence about a fox hiding in a garden.
She stumbled over one word, then sounded it out. My father clapped softly.
I did not tell her what Tessa had said. I wanted her evening to belong to that small triumph.
On the drive home, my father asked whether Lily could spend the night with him. I could tell he wanted to make up for what had happened.
“I’ll stay at my place with her,” I said. “You can visit tomorrow.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
At my front door, Lily turned to him.
“Grandpa, I can see your freckles now.”
He laughed, then looked close to tears.
“I didn’t know I still had any.”
After Lily went to bed, I called my father. He answered on the first ring.
“Did you speak to Clara?” I asked.
“She says you’re trying to embarrass her. She admits taking the refund, but she says she believed I’d repay you.”
“She forged my signature.”
He was silent.
“I told her she couldn’t stay here tonight,” he said at last. “She packed a bag and went to her sister’s.”
I sat at the kitchen table, Lily’s completed homework in front of me.
“I know this is painful.”
“I married her, Daniel. I brought her into Lily’s life.”
“You didn’t make her do this.”
“I kept explaining away the way she spoke to you. I told myself you two needed time.”
I remembered every dinner when Clara called my work “a hobby,” every time she questioned what Lily needed. I had let some of it pass to keep peace with my father.
“She may have done more than take the refund,” I said. “We’re checking.”
He promised to help.
The next morning, Naomi called before I had finished making breakfast.
“The specialist found another attempt,” she said. “Someone tried to open your mother’s foundation account using Tessa’s old login.”
My mother’s foundation paid for glasses and other care for children whose families could not cover the full cost. I stood very still while Naomi continued.
“The login was denied. But the attempt came from the same device used for Lily’s refund.”
“How long ago?”
“Three days.”
May you like
I looked toward the hallway where Lily was getting dressed for school.
Clara had been inside the clinic’s records before she ever took my daughter’s money.
