Chapter 6 - THE TWO MISSING PAGES
“Grandma knew?”
My mother nodded.
“She received Claire's concerns months before the end.”
I looked toward my father.
He said nothing.
That silence told me enough.
I left without another word.
Grandma was waiting at my house when I returned.
Penny sat beside her, carefully arranging colored pencils.
They were drawing flowers together.
The sight stopped me.
My grandmother had always been patient with Penny.
But now I wondered whether the kindness I admired had also been an excuse for avoiding difficult truths.
“Sweetheart,” I said to Penny, “could you finish your picture in your room?”
She nodded.
“Can Grandma come see it later?”
“Of course.”
When Penny disappeared down the hallway, I turned to Evelyn.
“You knew Claire was worried about the money before she died.”
Grandma lowered her pencil.
“Yes.”
“Mom says you chose not to act.”
Grandma didn't argue.
“I believed George when he said a complete investigation would put the company's financing at risk.”
“You believed him instead of Claire.”
“Yes.”
I waited for an explanation.
She didn't offer one.
Instead, she reached into her handbag and removed a small silver wristwatch.
It belonged to my grandfather.
He'd worn it every day until his death.
“I remember your grandfather telling me something when we opened our first warehouse,” she said.
“He said, ‘Evelyn, if we ever get so big we can't look a worker in the eye, we've built the wrong kind of company.’”
Her fingers moved across the watch.
“I forgot that.”
I sat down.
“You didn't forget. You made a choice.”
She looked at me.
“Yes. And I was wrong.”
For the first time, she sounded less like a powerful businesswoman and more like an eighty-two-year-old woman confronting a mistake she couldn't undo.
“Claire wasn't asking you to destroy the company,” I said.
“She was asking you to keep a promise.”
Grandma nodded.
“I know.”
She opened the blue binder.
“There's something else. Claire's original report contained twenty-four pages. The copy I received only has twenty-two.”
I looked through the binder.
The page numbers skipped from seventeen to twenty.
“Who removed them?”
“Whitney says she did.”
My stomach tightened.
An hour later, we met my sister in Grandma's study.
Whitney was no longer wearing expensive jewelry.
Her face looked tired.
When Grandma asked for the missing pages, Whitney reached into her handbag and laid two folded sheets on the desk.
“I kept them because I didn't know what else to do.”
I picked them up.
They contained a breakdown of the six million dollars.
Approximately $2.4 million had been applied to emergency company debt.
Another $2 million had paid for operational obligations, including temporary employee health coverage and keeping the remaining Riverbend facility open.
The rest had been classified under executive retention, consulting, and discretionary expenses.
I stared at one line.
Executive retention and advisory payments: $1.6 million.
“You took bonuses out of money meant for those workers?”
Whitney closed her eyes.
“I received a sales bonus during that period. I didn't ask where every dollar funding it originated.”
“But later you knew.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you return it?”
“Because I kept telling myself Dad would replace the money.”
Grandma leaned forward.
“How much did you receive?”
“Two hundred and twenty thousand.”
The room went silent.
Whitney looked at me.
“I know how that sounds.”
“No,” I said. “I don't think you do.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I spent ten years trying to prove I belonged in this company. Every account I won, Dad wanted a bigger one. Every promotion came with another condition.”
She rubbed her hands together.
“When Miller finally signed, Dad told me I'd saved the family business.”
“And you believed him.”
“I needed to.”
For the first time, I understood something about my sister.
Her cruelty wasn't caused by confidence.
It came from a lifetime of measuring herself against standards she could never satisfy.
That didn't excuse what she'd done to Penny.
But it helped explain the woman she'd become.
Whitney pushed the two pages toward me.
“I wanted Claire to wait until we refinanced the debt. I promised her I'd help make the payments right.”
“Then why didn't you?”
“Because Dad kept moving the deadline.”
She looked at Grandma.
“And because I was terrified of losing everything I'd worked for.”
Grandma stood.
“Thursday, we're going to disclose these records to the board.”
Whitney's face tightened.
“You can't simply announce this without a plan.”
“We've spent too much time hiding.”
“I'm not asking you to hide!”
Whitney pulled another document from her handbag.
It was a property sale proposal.
Mercer Supply intended to sell the remaining Riverbend employee housing properties to an outside developer.
The sale proceeds would help stabilize the company's debt.
I read the tenant list.
Several names matched Claire's notebook.
Including Elise Navarro.
“They're going to lose their homes?” I asked.
Whitney nodded.
“Many of them have lived there for decades.”
I stared at the proposal.
Then at my sister.
She whispered, “There's one more thing.”
“What?”
Whitney removed a sealed envelope from her bag.
Claire's handwriting covered the front.
It was addressed to Miller Homes' compliance department.
“I stopped this letter from being sent,” Whitney admitted.
I felt the room tilt.
“Why?”
May you like
She met my eyes.
“Because Claire was about to tell our biggest customer everything.”
