Chapter 5
Maya called me after midnight.
“I found the file Victor meant,” she said.
I sat up.
“What’s in it?”
“An invoice with my electronic approval. It says I authorized extra staffing for a gala last spring. The amount is far higher than what I remember.”
“Do you have the original event plan?”
“Yes. I saved it on my own drive.”
“Send both to Simone in the morning. Keep the files as they are.”
Maya let out a shaky breath.
“I thought I was careful.”
“You missed something. We’ll find out who changed it.”
“Victor made it sound as though he could prove I stole from the hotel.”
“Don’t let him decide what the records mean before anyone reviews them.”
There was a silence.
“Is that what your mother would say?” she asked.
“She’d use stronger words.”
Maya laughed once.
We ended the call.
By morning, Simone had copies of the event plan and the questioned invoice. The metadata showed Maya approved an earlier version. Someone changed the amount and the contractor name afterward.
Victor’s account made the change.
He claimed he corrected an accounting code.
The auditor kept working.
Meanwhile, Andre called me from a number I did not recognize.
“They changed my schedule for next week,” he said. “I’ve lost two shifts.”
“Who changed it?”
“My manager said the hotel has less work. We’re fully booked.”
I told him to send Simone the old and new schedules.
“I didn’t want special treatment,” he said.
“You’re asking to be paid for work you did. That isn’t special treatment.”
He sounded tired.
“My mother keeps telling me to leave. But if I leave, what happens to everyone still there?”
“I can’t ask you to carry that alone.”
I spoke to Simone. She contacted the hotel’s outside counsel and asked them to preserve the scheduling records. Andre’s shifts were restored before the weekend. The hotel also told managers no one was to be penalized for cooperating with the review.
I wanted that instruction to be more than paper.
On Saturday, I visited the hotel without Victor in the building. Maya met me in the lobby.
“Come with me,” she said.
She took me through the staff entrance, the banquet kitchen, and the west wing. She introduced me to people by name.
In the laundry room, a woman named Celeste said she had worked there twenty-two years.
“I used to know when I’d be paid without checking my account,” she told us. “Lately, I check every Friday.”
Maya’s face tightened.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Celeste folded a towel.
“Make it right.”
Maya did not promise anything she could not yet deliver.
“I’m working on it.”
Outside the laundry room, she looked at me.
“I used to come down here only when an event went wrong.”
“Come when nothing is wrong too.”
“I will.”
We walked past a corridor of framed hotel photographs. Elijah appeared in most of them, cutting ribbons or shaking hands. In an older picture, I recognized a young woman standing behind a reception desk.
“My mother worked here for a few months,” I said.
Maya stopped.
“Elijah never told me.”
“She left when she was pregnant with me. She didn’t want people at work asking questions she couldn’t answer.”
Maya touched the frame but kept her hand away from the glass.
“Did he help her?”
“Sometimes. Quietly.”
“I grew up thinking Dad took care of everyone.”
“He took care of a lot of people. He failed some too.”
She nodded.
Later that day, Elijah asked us both to dinner at his house. It was the first invitation that included me and Maya together.
I almost refused. Maya looked as nervous as I felt.
We went.
Elijah cooked badly and admitted it. We ate anyway. He asked me about Mom, and I told him she kept the postcard he sent me when I turned ten. It was the only card that came with his name on it.
He looked at the table.
“I should have sent more.”
“Yes,” I said.
Maya listened.
After dinner, Elijah showed us a box of old letters. Some were from Mom. One asked him to bring me to a family picnic so I could meet my sister.
He had written a reply he never mailed.
Maya read it and put it down.
“You kept us apart because you were afraid we’d be angry,” she said.
Elijah nodded.
“We’re angry now,” she replied. “At least we could have known each other.”
May you like
His phone rang before he could answer.
The auditor had found more altered time records. In several cases, wages removed from staff payroll matched payments sent to Victor’s contractor.
