Chapter 3 - The Signature That Never Changed
Leena's office occupied the second floor above a neighborhood hardware store. A child had taped a drawing of a courthouse to the reception window, complete with yellow flowers along its steps. Alina saw it before she saw the attorney: a simple building with doors that looked capable of opening.
Leena read the divorce papers without making a single sympathetic noise. Then she placed three pages on the desk side by side. "The settlement provision appears to promise you the condo and a cash payment. This schedule, which you initialed, permits a hold if the company asserts a good-faith claim for misappropriated assets. Did you have separate counsel at signing?"
"Gregory said we didn't need to make things ugly. I had taken medication after the appointment. I didn't understand the schedule."
"We need to establish what happened and what can be challenged. I'm not promising the contract disappears because he was cruel. I am telling you that we can contest the allegations and seek emergency access to living expenses."
Alina took out the letter from Dr. Evans. "I want the real medical records too."
"We'll request them independently. No conclusions about your health from this one document."
That mattered. Alina felt no sudden burst of hope that a secret baby would redeem her. She felt angry that medical information about her body had become a weapon in somebody else's negotiation.
They photographed the shipment invoice and compared it with her old electronic approvals. Alina had designed the company's internal review process in its earliest days. A genuine approval generated a unique eight-character code and a second timestamp from a device assigned to its owner. Gideon's document included her signature image but neither marker. Someone had fabricated it for people who wouldn't know the difference.
"Can you explain that in a statement?" Leena asked.
"In three sentences or in a hundred pages."
"Three first. The hundred later."
They filed a preservation notice with Gregory's company and sent the bank an emergency request for the precise basis of its hold. Leena also asked the court for a hearing on essential living costs. Alina returned to the hotel carrying copies in a cheap blue folder. She had no money, but she had made three decisions that did not require anyone's permission.
At the copy shop downstairs, Alina paid seventy cents to print the preservation request. The clerk offered to staple it, and she almost told him not to bother because Gregory would probably ignore it. Instead she watched the metal staple close around the pages. The invoice might be forged, the divorce might have been designed to corner her, and the letter might prove to be something no doctor should have written. None of those questions would be answered by the girl she used to be, who had been trained to swallow a suspicion rather than inconvenience a husband. She filed the copy herself, wrote the date across the top, and photographed the stamped receipt. The work was small and unglamorous. It was also the first time in weeks she could see a cause followed by an effect.
Gideon was waiting in the hotel lobby when she returned. He had not asked her room number; nevertheless, the sight of him made her stop. The clerk said he had been there only five minutes. Gideon stood and kept a respectful distance.
"You said you would wait for me to decide," Alina said.
"I did. Then I found something that couldn't wait. I should've called first."
"Yes. You should have."
He held out a newspaper, not an envelope. In the business section was a photograph of Gregory smiling beneath the announcement of a new regional medical-distribution contract. A familiar company seal appeared behind him. Across the image someone had written in marker: ASK ABOUT THE EMPTY BOXES.
"A person left this at my office," Gideon explained. "No return address."
"Then take it to your lawyer."
"I have. He says we should move quietly."
"Mine says we should preserve things before they vanish. Maybe your lawyer should meet mine."
Gideon's expression altered. He had expected either refusal or gratitude. Alina gave him a procedural demand. "I'll ask Leena whether she agrees," he said.
At the diner that afternoon, Doris poured Alina a bowl of vegetable soup and refused to let her call it charity. "You can fix the spreadsheet I use for the night shift," she said. "It thinks everybody works forty hours, even when we don't."
Within twenty minutes Alina had spotted missed overtime and an entire category of tips deducted twice. Doris watched her add formulas with a pencil on paper because the diner's ancient computer was down. "You really built that company?" she asked.
"The first inventory system. Gregory did the sales."
"Then I hope you get paid for building something people still use."
Alina thought of her signature copied onto forms by someone who believed she was gone. She made Doris promise not to leave the corrected payroll on the office counter. "Keep a copy for yourself," she said.
That evening, a woman approached her outside the diner. Bethany Price wore the same cream sweater she'd worn in Alina's foyer, now hidden beneath a raincoat. Her hands were empty. She did not ask Alina to forgive her.
"I shouldn't be here," Bethany said. "Gregory told me you were unstable. He said you'd hurt me if we met."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because he says I have to see Dr. Evans tomorrow. Not my own doctor. Evans. He won't tell me why."
Alina could see the woman's fear, but sympathy did not erase betrayal. "You need your own physician and your own lawyer. I cannot be either one."
"I found something in his desk." Bethany passed her a small pharmacy receipt. "There are medication orders billed in your name. Repeated prescriptions after you stopped treatment. Gregory said it was an accounting error."
The paper was dated August. Alina had not taken any fertility medication since April. The charges were for products she remembered paying for out of pocket. On the back, a handwritten notation read W-14, a code she knew from the company's refrigerated delivery routes.
"You were in his desk?" Alina asked.
"He keeps my insurance card there. Says I'll lose it." Bethany looked down. "I'm twenty-four, not six."
Alina photographed the receipt without taking the original. "Tell your doctor the truth. Don't tell Gregory you saw me. If you want to speak to my lawyer, I'll give you the number. No promises about what she can do."
Bethany accepted the number and hurried away. Alina called Leena immediately. Together they wrote a dated account of the encounter. Leena warned her not to turn a frightened woman into an informant or to make medical claims from a pharmacy receipt.
"I know," Alina said. "But I want to know who ordered medication in my name."
May you like
A minute later her phone received a photo from an unfamiliar number. It showed the outside of her hotel, taken in daylight. Beneath it were four words: STOP ASKING ABOUT MAY.
Alina did not delete it. She walked back into Rusty's, asked Doris to lock the rear door, and called Leena again.
