Chapter 11 - WHAT HE HAD SIGNED
Emma found Vincent alone in the conference room after everyone else left.
The certifications lay in front of him.
“Did you know?” she asked.
“No.”
“That isn't the only question.”
He looked up.
“Did you ask?”
Outside, traffic moved along the river. Vincent watched it for a moment before answering.
“Not enough.”
His signatures approved annual budgets and financial summaries, not individual patient payments. The auditors had found no evidence that he knew about the diverted funds. But he had accepted clean-looking reports because the fund was small compared with the rest of his business.
Small.
Emma couldn't get past that word.
“My father thought forty-eight thousand dollars was too much to ask for,” she said. “He apologized when he filled out the application.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
“I'm not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good. I'm not ready.”
She left him there.
At the hospital, Daniel was sitting up, arguing with Lily about whether hospital pudding counted as dinner. Emma laughed before she could stop herself.
For ten minutes, she let herself be somebody's daughter.
Then Daniel asked about the meeting.
“They're turning on each other.”
“That's what happens when people only agree about who to step on.”
Emma told him about Vincent's signatures. Daniel listened without interrupting.
“A man can miss something terrible,” he said. “What matters next is whether he tries to hide behind not knowing.”
The next morning, Vincent issued a statement accepting responsibility for the failures in oversight. He stepped back from fund decisions while the review continued and committed personal money to an independently managed emergency pool.
He didn't mention Emma by name or use a photograph with his mother.
Ruth read it and nodded. “Someone finally wrote a statement without asking you to stand in front of it.”
By afternoon, thirty-eight families had been identified as having payments recorded that they said they never received.
Emma read their short summaries. Missed rent. Delayed surgery. A car sold to pay for treatment.
Then an elderly porter called the number Ruth had provided for witnesses.
May you like
His wife had died in May.
“I don't need a check anymore,” he said. “I need somebody to tell me where it went.”
