Chapter Two
Jacinta
The calendar says ten o’clock. Blue block, foundation business. Blue doesn’t move.
Eleven. I count them, because counting is what I do when my stomach starts to drop.
“Jacinta.”
A woman rounds the cart, cream silk and easy confidence, and I know her before she speaks.
Ten years of hearing her name and she still looks exactly like the society pages said she would. “Oh no. Did nobody tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“We moved the walkthrough to nine. The venue team had a conflict.” Cassandra Vale presses a hand to her own chest. The same hand from the photograph. Her face arranges itself into sorry. “I sent the update myself. You didn’t get it?”
I check my phone. There’s the email. 9:47 last night, sent to an address that’s almost mine. Jacinta Colt with two t’s.
“There it is,” I say. “Spam folder.”
“Technology.” She says it warmly, like we’re sharing a joke, and I can feel how good she is at this.
How many rooms she’s won. “The good news is, you don’t have to worry about Friday at all.
Beatrice mentioned you’ve been overwhelmed with the details, so my team took everything off your plate. Every last detail.”
My plate.
My project.
My details.
“I wasn’t overwhelmed.”
“Of course not.” She touches my arm. “That’s exactly what Beatrice said you’d say.”
I stand there after she glides off, holding my phone, doing the math. The double-t email. The meeting that moved. The word overwhelmed, planted.
In the hallway, Beatrice materializes from the boardroom in pearls and kisses the air beside my cheek before I can decide whether to let her.
“You’re here early, dear.” She looks me over like I’m a catering invoice. “Are you sleeping? You seem scattered. Aaron mentioned he’s worried.”
The floor tilts. Just a degree. “Aaron said that?”
“A mother knows.” She pats my hand. “Leave Friday to the professionals. You’ve done enough.”
I’ve done everything. That’s the thing nobody can say out loud, because saying it would mean saying my name, and my name is apparently a choking hazard around here.
At the elevator, a man with gray at his temples and kind eyes holds the door.
“You’re Jacinta Colt,” he says. “The Renewal Centre. I read the original proposal. It’s the only decent thing this foundation has ever put its name on.”
“Thank you,” I say, and my voice cracks on it.
“Elliot Grant. I run operations with Aaron.” He studies me for half a second too long. “If anyone tells you different about that project, they didn’t read the proposal.”
The doors close on him.
I write his name in my notes app, because nice men in this building are so rare it’s worth noting.
*
By Tuesday, my access is gone.
The shared drive where years of Renewal Centre files live now says I need permission from the administrator. The administrator is a woman named Penny on the Vale events team, and Penny is very sorry, and Penny will get right back to me.
So I go the other way.
I request the project budget through the foundation’s finance portal, the one Celeste manages, because if I can’t have my documents, I’ll rebuild from the numbers. My brain doesn’t forget work. It forgets lunch. There’s a difference, and I built a career on knowing it.
The budget arrives at noon.
By 12:20 I’m staring at a line item called Northlight Consulting. $47,500 in March. $47,500 in April. Approved by C. Colt. No contract attached. No deliverables. No website when I search the name, just a mailbox in Delaware and a registration date six days before the first payment.
Celeste Colt.
Aaron’s little sister.
Keeper of the foundation’s money, signer of checks, maker of a consulting firm out of nothing.
I screenshot everything, but I’m focused. That’s the curious thing.
Everyone has spent two days telling me I’m falling apart, and I’ve never felt less scattered in my life.
*
Aaron arrives home at 9:40. I wait until the kids are down. I lay two things on the kitchen counter like a lawyer, which is funny, because I’m not a lawyer. I’m just a wife with a printer.
“The final program,” I say. “Still no name.”
“It’s a proof. I’ll fix it.”
“You’ve said that for days now.”
“Jace.” He loosens his tie. The fridge gets opened, closed, opened. “The venue alone is worth two hundred grand. I can’t go to war with the Vales over a typo this week.”
“It’s not a typo. It’s an erasure. And Cassandra moved my walkthrough and told everyone I’m overwhelmed, and now half the foundation thinks I’m having some kind of episode.”
“Then stop giving them ammunition.” He says it gently, which makes it worse. “Let her team handle the boring logistics. You should be resting before Friday.”
Resting.
There’s the word.
Beatrice’s word, wearing my husband’s mouth.
I slide the second paper across. “Northlight Consulting. Ninety-five thousand dollars, no contract, approved by Celeste.”
He goes still. Actually still, like I’ve unplugged him.
“Where did you get this?”
Not is it real. Not oh my God. Where did you get this.
The first question is about containing me.
“It doesn’t matter. Aaron, she’s stealing.”
“She’s my sister.”
“She’s embezzling from the charity that’s supposed to open my center.”
“Lower your voice.” He checks the stairs.
He actually checks the stairs, like Celeste might be hiding on the third step.
“I will deal with her after the gala. If this leaks before Friday, the foundation folds, the Renewal Centre dies with it, and every camera in Chicago finds your project on the same page as the word fraud. Is that what you want?”
“I want my name on my own building.”
“And you’ll have it.” He reaches for my hand. “One week, Jace. Hold your tongue, smile at the Vales, and let me clean my own house. Whatever Cassandra says to you, let it roll off. We need them.”
And there it is.
The opening.
I could put the photograph on this counter right now, next to his sister’s imaginary consulting firm, and watch his face do the math.
He’s still hiding it. I can hear the hiding. And if he can hide Tuesday from me, he can decide what I am this week, too. Fragile. Overwhelmed. The wife who needs resting.
So I give him the smallest true thing, the way he taught me.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay.”
He kisses my forehead.
The door closes.
*
Thursday, Beatrice’s assistant delivers the gala packet to the house. Final printed program, heavy cream card stock, no more proofs, no more fixes.
Page six. The Renewal Centre, presented by the Colt Foundation. Event direction by Cassandra Vale.
I read it twice. Then I laugh, one short ugly bark, because the alternative is throwing a chair through the kitchen window and confirming everything they’ve been saying about me.
My phone buzzes.
Unknown number.
The second time this week.
You should ask him about the hotel. Except everyone will tell you you’re unstable. Funny how that works.
I stare at it until the screen goes dark.
That’s the whole trap right there, printed in plain text. The photo exists to make me speak. The story about my mind exists to eat whatever I say.
Scream, and I’m unstable.
Whisper, and I’m imagining things.
Either way, Cassandra wins.
Except they’ve missed one detail about me.
My whole life people have mistaken my systems for symptoms. The labels. The bins. The lists. They think the rails mean the train can’t run without supervision.
But the rails mean I never lose anything.
I open my laptop and make a folder. Into it goes the photograph, timestamp and all. The Northlight screenshots. Both program versions. The email to Jacinta Colt with two t’s, headers and all. I name the folder Recipes, because nobody opens a folder named Recipes.
“What’s that?” Willa asks, appearing at my elbow the way she does, silently, like a very organized ghost.
“Me, cooking something.”
She peers at the screen. “Does Dad know?”
I look at my eight-year-old daughter, who color-codes her crayons.
“No, baby,” I say. “Dad’s having some quiet time.”