Chapter 6 - Peoria
The next morning, I went to Peoria.
June did not want me to.
She told me three times that her mother's house was small and that there was no reason for someone like me to come there.
That sentence alone was reason enough.
I had spent years expecting people to enter my world.
For once, I needed to enter theirs.
June's mother lived in a narrow one-story house with faded blue siding and a porch railing that leaned slightly toward the street.
Lila opened the door.
She was eight.
She had June's eyes.
Micah appeared behind her holding a plastic dinosaur with one missing leg.
When June stepped from my car, both children ran past me.
“Mommy!”
June dropped to her knees.
They wrapped themselves around her.
For several seconds, she simply held them.
I looked away.
Inside, June's mother, Eleanor Carter, sat beside an oxygen machine.
She apologized for the clutter.
I apologized for arriving uninvited.
Her eyebrows rose.
“Men with houses like yours usually don't apologize.”
“Maybe that's part of the problem.”
She studied me.
Then she nodded toward the kitchen table.
“Sit.”
June brought out a cardboard box filled with papers.
Every pay stub.
Every notice.
Every schedule change.
Every rejected request.
Leah joined us by video call.
We photographed everything.
Then Eleanor pulled out an envelope.
“I kept this because it bothered me.”
Inside was a letter from Blackwell Domestic Services.
It had been mailed after June's complaint.
The letter stated that June had voluntarily declined health insurance, childcare assistance, transportation reimbursement, and retirement contributions.
June stared at it.
“I never saw this.”
At the bottom was her signature.
Except it was not her signature.
Leah asked June to write her name on a sheet of paper.
The difference was obvious.
Someone had forged it.
Micah climbed onto June's lap.
“Mommy, are you in trouble?”
“No, baby.”
“Are you losing your job?”
June froze.
I realized he had heard that fear before.
Probably many times.
I crouched beside him.
“Your mom isn't losing her job.”
He looked at me suspiciously.
“You're the boss?”
“Yes.”
“Then why doesn't she have money?”
The room went silent.
Children can ask questions adults spend careers avoiding.
I looked at June.
Then at Eleanor.
Then back at Micah.
“Because people who worked for me were stealing it.”
“Why didn't you stop them?”
I could have told him I did not know.
I could have explained corporate layers and shell companies and delegated authority.
Instead, I gave him the only answer that mattered.
“I should have.”
Micah seemed to consider that.
Then he handed me his broken dinosaur.
“Can you fix this?”
For reasons I could not explain, my throat tightened.
“I can try.”
While I repaired the toy with tape from Eleanor's kitchen drawer, June found another document.
A handwritten list.
Names and phone numbers.
“What is that?” I asked.
June's face changed.
“Employees who complained.”
There were nineteen names.
Some I recognized from Leah's termination records.
At the bottom was a name circled twice.
Mateo Alvarez.
Beside it, June had written something three years earlier.
SAID HE HAD PROOF.
I looked at her.
“What proof?”
“I don't know.”
“Where is he now?”
June's eyes shifted toward her mother.
“We don't know.”
“What happened to him?”
“He came to work one Friday.”
May you like
She swallowed.
“Then he disappeared.”
