Then came the money, and a coworker who swore she had seen it all.
Nearly ninety thousand dollars, gone from the Carter Ridge Homes operating account.
My CFO found the gap.
She was kind about it.
She sat on the edge of my desk with a legal pad and her lovely, sorrowful face, and said, “Michael, I’m so sorry. I wish it were anyone else.”
Her name was Ashley Rourke.
By the next winter, she was wearing my ring.
It did not feel like being lied to.
It felt like being rescued.
Every document reached me already organized.
Every email had already been read.
“Don’t worry about your mail,” Ashley told me, in her cool, capable voice.
“I’ll triage it.”
Even the paperwork I signed that spring carried the stamp of Dana Rourke, her cousin, the notary at our front desk who had been notarizing payroll forms for years.
