Chapter 46 - The Receipt with My Name
The acknowledgment arrived while I was tying my rehearsal shoes.
Twenty-seven thousand six hundred dollars.
The amount sat beneath a heading that made my stomach tighten.
BENEFICIARY DISTRIBUTION — RECEIPT CONFIRMED.
My name appeared at the bottom.
Lena Rostova.
Not an obvious imitation of my handwriting.
Not a clumsy signature somebody had traced from a photograph.
Typed letters. A timestamp. A box marked accepted.
For a moment, I almost preferred a forgery I could point at.
This looked ordinary enough to become believable before anyone asked me.
Camille called as I enlarged the page.
“Don’t use any link inside the document.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good. We’re obtaining the submission history through the administrator.”
“Which administrator?”
“A company called Bellweather Rights Services.”
I wrote it down on the back of an old rehearsal schedule.
“Do they claim the account is mine?”
“They describe you as the beneficiary. That is different from identifying you as the account holder.”
I pressed my fingers against the paper.
“Then why does it say I received the money?”
“That is the question.”
Outside the office, Ruby was explaining to Mateo that ballerinas did not need wings because they had arms.
Mateo sounded unconvinced.
I listened to their argument for several seconds.
It helped me remain in the room.
Camille arranged a meeting with the accountant that afternoon. I taught the morning classes, shortened my own rehearsal, and let Nadia take the advanced group.
Nobody accused me of abandoning the school.
Nobody collapsed because I was absent.
At Camille’s office, the accountant separated the records into three piles.
Income generated.
Charges deducted.
Distributions recorded.
Some income concerned licenses whose underlying authority remained disputed. Some charges appeared consistent with existing agreements. Others required support.
The recent distribution came from a licensed recording of my mother’s American rehearsal work.
I stared at the description.
“The recording Duval owns?”
“Possibly related material,” Camille said. “We need the reference numbers before treating them as the same.”
I nodded.
Wanting the answer badly did not improve it.
The accountant turned the acknowledgment toward me.
The money had not been sent to an account bearing my name as legal owner.
It had gone to a pooled client account controlled by Bellweather.
Within that account, an internal ledger identified me as beneficiary.
“So they paid themselves a payment meant for me.”
“They may have transferred money into an account where they say it was held for you,” the accountant replied. “What happened afterward matters.”
“Do we know?”
“Not yet.”
I looked at Camille.
“I spent fourteen years being told there wasn’t anything left.”
“I know.”
“Some months I worked two cleaning jobs.”
“I know.”
“Twenty-seven thousand dollars would have changed everything.”
She allowed the sentence to remain.
That was one reason I trusted her.
She did not interrupt pain with a smaller, more manageable fact.
Then she asked whether I recognized an email address printed beneath the acceptance record.
I leaned forward.
It used my surname.
The first initial was mine.
The numbers meant nothing.
“No.”
“Have you ever authorized someone to accept royalty statements electronically?”
“No.”
“Even through the estate?”
“No.”
She made a note.
At home, Alexander had placed dinner on the kitchen table.
He did not ask whether the money could simply be replaced.
He knew better now.
I told him about the pooled account.
The receipt.
The email address.
He listened without checking his phone.
Then he asked, “What part frightens you most?”
I considered the question.
“That someone can keep calling me paid until people become tired of hearing me say I wasn’t.”
He reached across the table.
I took his hand.
“You won’t have to say it alone.”
“I know.”
After dinner, I opened the wedding notebook.
Small. Warm. Ours.
The words were still there.
I added a practical question beneath the catering list.
Can we have the ceremony after the children’s Saturday classes?
Alexander read it and smiled.
“We can.”
“My workday doesn’t have to become a problem for the wedding.”
“No.”
For ten minutes, we discussed something I had chosen.
Then Camille called.
Bellweather had identified the person who accepted the recent statement.
Not me.
Not an unknown hacker.
An authorized representative attached to the beneficiary profile.
The representative was listed as V. Marchand.
I went still.
“Did Vivienne tell them she had my permission?”
“They say her authority predates your adulthood.”
I looked toward the archival box on the shelf.
My mother’s correction.
My crooked house.
Fourteen years.
“And nobody thought authority over a child might eventually end?”
Camille’s voice sharpened.
“We’ve asked them to show exactly what they relied on.”
Outside, the city lights came on.
May you like
Somewhere, a grown woman had been paid as though she were still a child who could not answer for herself.
Tomorrow, I intended to answer.
