Chapter 2 - A Signature That Wasn't Hers
The moment the wheels left the runway, Trinity opened Dakota's letter without asking my permission. I could have stopped her. Instead, I stared at the false signature printed beneath mine on the Bellwether authorization and tried to remember who had brought it to my office. For six months I had been telling myself the company was somebody else's headache. I was vice president of operations at Aster Freight, not the accountant. But the signature was mine, and even at thirty thousand feet there was nowhere to set it down.
Dakota had written in the precise block lettering she used when she practiced safety announcements. Miles, the letter began, I am not using this flight to punish you in public. I discovered the booking on our shared computer when I printed my training schedule. The receipt showed the same hotel and airfare that appeared on the expense statement you left in our printer. Your company's controller has already raised questions about those charges; I did not initiate her review. I did, however, find something you need to look at before you blame another woman for your decisions.
The second paragraph named a payment of $84,600 to Bellwether Advisory. It had been authorized from a budget labeled Employee Transition Support—the money Aster had promised workers it laid off when a distribution center closed. Dakota wrote that she had checked the publicly available company registration after seeing Bellwether on our home printer. The registered contact was a mail-forwarding office, and the name beside it was Trinity Shaw. I looked from the page to the woman beside me. She was already shaking her head.
“I consult for Aster on branding,” Trinity said. “That part is real. My business is Shaw Creative. I've never heard of Bellwether.”
“Maybe accounting used the wrong vendor code.”
“On a document with my forged signature? Listen to yourself.”
I read the letter's final line. I have included this page because you may be tempted to destroy it. Ask Trinity to keep her own copy. I have kept mine. I will speak to you after we land, outside the aircraft, if you can speak without lying. The handwriting ended there. No threats, no theatrical declaration that my life was over. Dakota had given the person I was betraying a chance to protect herself from something bigger.
Trinity turned the photocopy over. On the back, in Dakota's smaller handwriting, was a number for Aster's compliance hotline and the word independently. Trinity looked at it a long time. “You told me your divorce was filed,” she said at last.
“I said we were separating.”
“You showed me a lawyer's email. You said the paperwork was in progress.”
The email had been from the attorney who handled Aster's warehouse leases. I had cropped out the subject line before showing it to her. I remembered being proud of how convincing the picture looked. “I didn't say you had to believe me,” I muttered.
She turned toward the window. “That may be the ugliest defense I've ever heard.”
At the back of the cabin, a baby began to cry. Dakota crossed the aisle with a bottle of warmed water for its mother. Her shoulders were straight, but she was gripping the bottle so firmly that her fingertips had gone pale. I had lived beside that woman for eleven years. I knew she bit the inside of her cheek when she was trying not to cry. I also knew she hated having anyone see it. Today I finally understood that knowing someone's habits was not the same as listening to her.
Two hours into the flight, Elise offered Trinity a few minutes in the galley while the other attendant watched the cabin. Trinity returned looking steadier. She told me Elise had suggested she preserve the paper and seek advice after landing, nothing more. “Dakota asked not to be assigned to our section for the rest of the flight,” she added. “The crew chief agreed.”
I looked around. A different attendant was distributing lunch. “She told you that?”
“No. I asked whether there was something I could do to make her day easier. Elise said leave her alone.” Trinity folded the authorization into her own passport wallet. “I'm taking this. I won't let you make me another one of your explanations.”
I tried to sleep and dreamed of an employee named Raymond Price standing in my office with a folder. He had worked at Aster's Riverside distribution center for nineteen years. In March, when that site closed, I'd promised him personally that severance payments and retraining checks would arrive within thirty days. At the time I had believed it. At least, that was how I preferred to remember it.
My last conversation with Raymond had been less generous. He had called about a missing payment while I was in a hotel elevator with Trinity. I had said, “Finance handles that, Ray. Stop calling my personal number.” The elevator doors had opened, and I had switched off my phone before he finished speaking. He had a daughter starting community college. I knew that because he had brought her to the company picnic the previous summer, and she'd beaten me at a beanbag toss.
Now his name appeared again when the in-flight Wi-Fi loaded an older email from Priya Shah, Aster's chief financial officer. It was dated three weeks earlier. Miles, I need you to clarify the Bellwether authorization and why it was coded to the transition account. No services have been documented. Please do not approve further expenses pending review. I had marked it unread, then gone to dinner with Trinity. Below it was my reply, sent by my assistant at my request: Discuss next quarter. Not urgent.
I didn't need a mysterious saboteur to explain the audit. Priya had warned me. I had treated an uncomfortable question as an administrative nuisance until it threatened my vacation.
Trinity read the email over my shoulder. “Did you approve it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I thought it was part of the rebranding project.”
“From an employee support fund?”
I closed the screen. She didn't need to raise her voice. Her questions occupied every inch of the space between us.
Near the end of the flight, the captain announced our descent into Florence. Sunlight broke across the cabin. Passengers leaned toward the windows, excited to see the hills. Trinity removed the champagne flute, still full, from her tray and handed it to the attendant collecting glasses. Then she faced me.
“I'm going to call that hotline,” she said. “I'm also going to tell them what you claimed about your marriage and the trips you billed through my actual consulting account.”
“You'll destroy your contract.”
“Maybe.” She buckled her seat belt. “But if I don't, somebody has already signed my name to a payment I never received. Your comfort isn't the thing I'm protecting anymore.”
For the first time in our affair, I saw that she could leave without giving me a chance to negotiate. My phone, still glowing with Priya's messages, reflected my face in its black border. I looked like a stranger I had spent years defending.
When we landed, Elise asked the front cabin to remain seated until passengers who needed assistance had cleared the aisle. Dakota walked past our row toward the aircraft door without looking at me. She wasn't avoiding the truth. She was finishing her job. I wanted to tell her I understood. I still didn't.
At the exit, Trinity stopped and touched Dakota's sleeve only after Dakota turned toward her. “He told me you were getting divorced,” she said. “I should've checked. I'm sorry.”
Dakota's reply was quiet enough that I had to lean to hear it. “You owe me nothing you can't prove by what you do next.”
May you like
Then she looked at me. “We need to talk. Not in here.”
Through the open aircraft door, Florence waited beneath a clear sky. I had brought two women to Italy and managed to lose the trust of both before setting foot on the ground.
