37
CECíLIA
On the last Saturday in September, I closed the eighth folder.
Teresa sat across from me in a room at the Hotel das Acácias, her notes open in front of her.
The muffled sound of a music check came from the ballroom.
The season’s last delivery was set up, photographed, and signed for.
For the first time in months, there wasn’t another date in that series waiting the following week.
I ran my hand over the cover.
The five weddings since the one where I’d seen the bride drinking water had brought different faces, demands, and small complications.
At one, the groom’s mother asked us to save a sugar flower to show her sister.
At another, the couple chose a cake with almost no decoration and spent longer discussing flavors than any other client that year.
There was rain, a time change, a delivery that took Ivo two trips.
There were also days when everything worked and I only realized on the way back that I hadn’t been afraid during setup.
None of those parties knew they were part of my journey.
Teresa turned the page.
“Here’s the breakdown of the extras. Can you go over it with me?”
I checked it.
Two events had increased the number of guests after the initial contract.
The quantities, amounts, and approvals were all documented.
One of the adjustments had included a second delivery, billed separately.
I had learned to put these things in writing before acting on them, rather than relying on someone’s goodwill to remember them later.
We found a small discrepancy in the transport charge. Teresa checked the receipt, corrected the amount, and sent me the updated version before we finished talking.
“I want to work with you again,” she said.
I smiled.
“So do I. With enough notice to organize the team.”
“I heard that from Joana, too.”
I laughed.
Teresa gathered the documents.
“It was a good season, Cecília.”
I looked out the window onto the garden.
It had been a good season. Difficult, exhausting, sometimes scary. But good. I could accept that assessment without lying about the rest.
When I left, Joana and Ivo had already finished packing up our things. I helped carry the last box. At the bakery, we did the final inventory check and shared a portion I’d set aside for us.
Joana raised her fork.
“Here’s to the oven working.”
“To tables at the right height,” Ivo added.
“Here’s to sticking to the schedule,” I said.
She looked at me with exaggerated approval, and the three of us laughed.
Then we each went our separate ways.
***
On Monday, I took the season’s final accounts to the person who helped me with the business finances.
I wanted to know how much of that sense of victory was actually real after paying everything off.
There were taxes, labor hours, the oven repair, materials purchased, and amounts still receivable.
We sat down with the records and arrived at a figure less impressive than the revenue, but one that could still be used.
I wouldn’t be able to do all the renovations I’d imagined.
But I could start the first phase without depleting my reserves.
I went back to the bakery with that written down. Joana was serving a customer and signaled she’d be finished soon. I waited, looking at the display case we’d filled that morning.
I liked that place.
I liked it even on days when I wanted to lock the door and sleep. Perhaps especially because I was beginning to see ways of staying without giving it every hour of my life.
Once Joana was free, I showed her what we could consider: a better-positioned work counter, reorganized cabinets, and a small alteration depending on the final quote. I didn’t announce building work. I asked her to look with me at whether it would solve the problems that got in our way most.
She picked up the floor plan and turned it the right way.
“If you put it here, the door will hit it.”
I looked.
It really did.
I erased the line, grateful to discover it on paper.
***
That afternoon, Clarice sent me a formal proposal.
The document came from Augusto’s representative.
Unlike the vague contact from weeks earlier, there were now written conditions: a payment, statements declaring the conflict resolved, and restrictions on what could be disclosed.
The wording treated the old accusation as a difference of interpretation.
It didn’t say I had sold information, but it didn’t clearly refute that idea either.
I read it once but couldn’t finish.
The second time, I highlighted the sentences I didn’t understand and those I understood all too well.
There was an invitation to a private meeting, with the justification of preventing the matter from becoming more draining for everyone. I stared at the word “everyone.”
The document didn’t know how often I’d walked into a room expecting to recognize the story of my wedding on someone’s face. Or perhaps it did, and had been written that way anyway.
I called Clarice.
“I’m not going to that meeting.”
She said her first reading had been the same as mine and suggested we examine each condition before replying.
We did. I asked what the wording would require me to accept, what remained vague, and what I’d lose by signing.
I didn’t have to understand every term on my own to recognize the choice they were offering.
“I want to refuse,” I said at the end. “I won’t discuss an amount while the document leaves the lie breathing.”
Clarice noted my decision and drafted the response for me to review. I corrected a sentence that seemed more conciliatory than I wanted. Then I authorized her to send it.
I filed the proposal with the other documents.
I closed the folder.
***
I told Dante that night.
He was home. I had put Bento to bed and called him from the kitchen, near the open window. I told him I’d turned down the proposal and that Clarice would handle the follow-up.
Dante stayed quiet until I finished.
“Do you want to show it to me?” he asked.
“I want you to receive the version Clarice can share. Some of it will need to go into the investigation.”
“Okay.”
I heard a chair move.
“He keeps calling it an ‘interpretation,’” I said.
“I know it wasn’t just that.”
I rested my hand on the counter.
“I was happy about the bakery today. About the final accounts. Then this document arrived, and it felt as though he’d come in here again without asking.”
Dante took a deep breath.
“The good part of the day is still yours.”
I looked at the renovation notes beside the fruit bowl. He wasn’t telling me to forget the proposal. Only reminding me of something I’d almost let it take away too.
“Joana spotted a door hitting something in my drawing,” I told him.
“One of the important doors?”
I smiled.
“They’re all important when they hit the countertop.”
We talked a little about the bakery. Then about Bento’s Saturday, the toy car still at Dante’s apartment, and when we could see each other. The proposal hadn’t disappeared. It remained filed away, waiting for the answer I’d chosen.
But that night, it wasn’t the last topic we discussed before I went to sleep.
38
DANTE
The report didn’t start with Cecília’s name.
It began with the contracts, the period examined, and the records consulted. There was a list of documents, interviews, and checks. I read the first pages with an attention I would once have reserved for the conclusion.
Eunice sat across from me. Two members of the external review team and a board representative were also there.
It was the first week of October.
The checks had linked the material given to the press to files that passed between Rubens and Augusto.
The preserved history, recovered attachments, and recorded answers made it possible to reconstruct the sequence.
My brother had supplied information, followed the preparation of some of the content, then used the transfer to Cecília to explain a leak whose route he knew.
There was no evidence that she had received money for the article. The eighteen thousand reais were documented as a loan, with the agreed-upon installments and corresponding repayments.
I already knew I’d been unfair to her.
Still, seeing that written down made me rest my hand on the table.
“He knew what was going to the reporter,” I said.
“The records support that,” Eunice replied. “And the explanation given to you doesn’t match what he himself observed.”
The team presented the other part of their work.
They returned to the linen purchase. The manufacturer had delivered directly to the hotel.
In addition to the goods, the hotel had paid for logistical support no one could substantiate.
The charge had gone through Linha Norte.
Other contracts repeated the process. The recovered records included payments of Augusto’s personal expenses linked to those transfers.
Eunice placed the table sent to the reporter beside the full accounting entries. The article showed price differences between hotels. The intermediary’s fees had been left out.
“That’s the part Cecília asked about,” I said.
“And this is what wasn’t in the material sent to the reporter,” Eunice replied, pointing to the other column.
I remembered discussing the family’s exposure with lawyers, trying to learn who’d overheard our conversations.
Meanwhile, Augusto’s explanation for the charge remained accepted, and the contracts continued.
The article had created a problem he’d helped me manage; Cecília’s question had disappeared along with her.
I looked at the payments again. My brother had risked the company to keep what passed through his hands. I’d given him five years without bringing up that question again.
I listened to the explanations and asked questions.