9 #2
I ran my finger down the first column. June 2019. One thousand reais. The same amount the next month. And the next. A year and a half of her life arranged so I could scan it in seconds.
“So they got their money back.”
“They received eighteen thousand reais. The receipt you showed me describes a loan for that amount. The documentation gathered so far is consistent with that description.”
I looked up.
“But?”
“There’s no hidden ‘but.’ I’m simply stating what the documents show. Based on them, I have no way of determining who provided information to the reporter. Nor why your brother offered a different interpretation.”
I turned the page. There was the original transfer and the description used in the spreadsheet Augusto had shown me five years earlier.
“Consulting,” I read.
“That’s the text in the internal summary. We didn’t find a consulting contract with Cecília Avelar in the material provided by the finance department.”
“My brother said she was paid for information.”
“And do you have any record of that statement other than the conversation between the two of you?”
I looked for a better answer than the truth. I didn’t find one.
“I don’t know. I can go back through my messages from then.”
“Preserve the files. If you find anything, send it through the channel set up for the investigation.”
She took her time writing that down. I’d turned my habit of trusting Augusto into a way of running the business. Now a woman sitting across from me had to tell me to look for proof of what I’d sworn I knew.
“Who else had access to the spreadsheet?”
“We’re checking. We also need to understand the contractual relationship with Linha Norte. The documents came in piecemeal. We’ve requested the complete records and asked that all related files be preserved.”
I leaned back. Outside the window, a man was washing the neighboring building’s glass, suspended at the twelfth floor. Water ran beneath his squeegee, leaving a clear strip. I thought, uselessly, that he could see where his work began and ended.
“I want to talk to Augusto.”
“About what, exactly?”
“About the repayments. He knew she paid it back.”
“He knew?”
I looked at the sheet again.
Augusto’s name was on the loan receipt. It wasn’t on the receipts for each deposit.
“I need to find out.”
“Yes. And I’d prefer the people investigating to ask the questions about the records. You can give us your account of the original conversation, making clear what you’re unsure of. Trying to get an explanation yourself now could make the facts harder to reconstruct.”
I hated waiting when the person I wanted to confront worked two floors below me.
But I’d already decided once that my certainty was worth more than what Cecília was trying to say.
“I’ll write my account.”
Eunice put away her pen.
“And there’s something else. Your personal relationship with the vendor needs to be taken into account in how we conduct this work. I’ve informed the people overseeing the external review. Our conclusions won’t require your approval.”
Vendor seemed a small word for Cecília. It also described a part of her life I had the power to damage again.
“All right.”
After Eunice left, I opened a blank document. I wrote the approximate date of that first conversation with Augusto. Set down what I remembered him showing me, what he’d said, and what I could no longer separate from everything I’d told myself afterward.
On the next line, I began a sentence with “Cecília didn’t explain.”
I stared at it.
I deleted it and wrote: “I interrupted Cecília when she tried to answer.”
I continued from there.
***
I reached the play space at nine forty-seven on Saturday morning.
I waited in the car until five to ten. With nothing else to hold, my phone felt too big in my hands. I put it in my jacket’s inside pocket and checked for the third time that it was on silent.
The place had a green gate, flowerpots near the entrance, and a small sign with drawings of hands. I could have walked past it every day for years without noticing it.
Cecília arrived at ten with Bento by the hand. He carried a blue backpack and stopped before going through the gate. He looked at me, down at my shoes, then back at his mother.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning,” she replied. “Shall we go in?”
He nodded without saying a word.
At reception, Cecília gave Bento’s name and showed her reservation. I started to reach for my wallet. She was already putting the payment receipt away.
I lowered my hand.
A woman showed us where to leave our things. Two other children were at a painting table, and a smaller boy was crawling through a fabric tunnel. It wasn’t loud, but sounds came from every direction. Bento watched the tunnel and tightened his grip on his mother’s fingers.
“We can sit over there first,” Cecília said.
She chose a low bench near the sandbox. I sat at the far end, leaving space. Bento stood between her knees while she opened his backpack.
“Your notebook is here.”
“Later.”
She put it away.
I’d rehearsed questions about the house he’d drawn, the cake he’d eaten at the hotel, the dinosaur that might or might not be his favorite toy. Watching him concentrate on a yellow bucket, I felt they were all too much.
“Do you want to go play?” Cecília asked.
Bento pointed at his sneakers. She helped him take them off and tucked a sock inside each one. He stepped carefully into the sand, bent down, and picked up a shovel.
For a few minutes, he shoveled sand back and forth without looking at me.
I didn’t know where to put my hands.
At the office, I only had to walk into a room for someone to offer me a problem, a decision, something to justify my being there. Here, my son was busy. I was a man on a child-sized bench, knees too high, trying not to make a child responsible for my anxiety.
Cecília took the water bottle from the backpack and drank. Her hair was tied up, her sneakers pale, and the garden light did nothing to hide the shadows under her eyes. Even after closing the bottle, she kept her fingers around it.
“You have the delivery today,” I said quietly.
She looked at me.
“This afternoon.”
“Did the space in the walk-in work out?”
“It did. Elisa sent the confirmation.”
I nodded. I didn’t mention that I could call the hotel. The matter had already been taken care of by the people in charge.
Bento placed the full bucket in front of her feet.
“Hold it here.”
Cecília held the handle while he packed the sand down with the shovel. Then, following his instructions, she turned the bucket over and lifted it. Half the sandcastle crumbled.
“It fell,” Bento said.
“A piece fell off.”
He crouched to push the sand back into place. One of the other children came over, took a mold, and left. Bento watched until the child had moved away, then carried his bucket to a quieter corner.
The clock on the wall read ten twenty-four.
I wanted something to happen. A smile for me. A question. Some opening that would let me go home with more than the image of the back of his bent head.
I felt ashamed of that desire. He was just playing on a Saturday morning. He didn’t know that I was counting the minutes like a man awaiting a sentence.
The shovel slipped out of the sandbox and landed beside my shoe.
I picked it up by the handle.
Bento looked at me for the first time since we’d come in.
“Can I leave it here?” I asked, pointing to the edge.
He held out his hand.
I handed it to him.
“This one’s for digging,” he said.
“Okay.”
“The other one is for building roads.”
He pointed to a flat tool. I looked where he was pointing.
“Got it.”
He crouched down again. The conversation was over.
I let it end.
Just before eleven, Cecília told him he had five minutes left. Bento tried to fit two molds inside each other, gave up, and went for his sneakers. He sat beside his mother with sand up to his ankles.
She wiped his feet with a small towel. I watched how quickly she did it, how he lifted first one leg, then the other without being asked. A whole routine lived in those movements.
On the way out, Bento wanted water. Cecília stopped by the gate, opened the backpack, and handed me the pencil case on top while she searched for the bottle.
The boy took the pencil case from my hand shortly afterward.
“I didn’t draw anything,” he told his mother.
“Today you wanted to play in the sand.”
He looked at me.
“Are you leaving?”
I took a fraction of a second to answer.
“Yes. This is when we said we’d leave.”
Bento tipped the bottle with both hands. When he was done, the water sloshed against the cap.
“Bye,” he said.
“Bye, Bento.”
I didn’t reach out to hug him.
Cecília said goodbye with a nod, and the two of them walked over to the car. I stood by the gate while she buckled her son into his car seat. Then I walked over to my car.
In the driver’s seat, I took off my jacket. A grain of sand fell from the sleeve onto my pants. Two more clung near the cuff.
I’d stayed an hour. My son had said only a few things to me and hadn’t used the drawing he’d brought. Perhaps all that morning had been to him was a castle that fell apart and a man who gave him back his shovel.
I took out my phone, opened Cecília’s messages, and wrote that I’d like to see him the next Saturday, if she thought the same time would work.
I read it before sending. Deleted a question about what Bento had thought of me.
I reread what was left.
I sent only the request for another visit.