Chapter 6
The next morning, Emily met Ruth in an office that smelled of printer toner and fresh paint. She arrived with a folder of scholarship letters, the disputed minutes, and a hand-drawn timeline.
Ruth read in silence. Emily watched the attorney's face and tried not to demand immediate certainty from every twitch of an eyebrow.
“The foundation's annual public filings are available,” Ruth said finally. “We can compare them with the grant amounts and expenses reported to donors. But the detailed ledger and contracts aren't automatically public. We'll request them through whatever inspection rights you have.”
“And if they refuse?”
“Then we consider a petition for inspection and notify the appropriate charitable oversight office of the specific discrepancies. Neither route guarantees an immediate answer.”
She also asked Ruth whether the scholarship families would have to wait until the dispute ended. Ruth explained that ordinary governance duties continued during an investigation and that the board could still review grants if conflicts were managed. Emily wrote that down. The investigation had to protect students, not merely produce a compelling case against her mother.
Emily nodded. It was strange how reassuring a realistic answer could be. Her mother had trained her to expect either instant obedience or total disaster. Ruth offered a third option: a process.
At Ruth's request, Emily called the foundation's registered secretary on speakerphone. The secretary confirmed that Emily remained listed as a director and that no resignation had been recorded. Eleanor had simply stopped sending her meeting notices.
Ruth asked for that statement in an email. The secretary agreed, though her voice became cautious when Ruth mentioned record inspection.
Within an hour, Ruth sent a formal request for board notices, minutes, grant registers, bank statements held by the foundation, and service contracts covering the previous two fiscal years. She asked that electronic files and associated records be preserved.
Emily was not expecting a box of documents that afternoon. She was surprised to discover that the request itself changed something in her. For the first time, she was not asking her mother to decide how much truth she deserved.
Emily returned to her apartment and looked through Thomas's early donor letters. He had told every contributor that scholarship commitments would be tracked separately from administrative spending. The exact wording mattered now. Donors had not simply given money for any activity with a patriotic label; some had restricted gifts for direct student assistance. Ruth told Emily that the accountants would need to examine those restrictions individually before deciding how funds could be recovered or redistributed. A nonprofit could be wrong without every expenditure being illegal, and Emily wanted an honest finding, not a satisfying slogan.
That night, Dana shared a public copy of the fund's most recent tax return. The return reported a sharp rise in management and administrative expenses while individual scholarship awards had fallen.
“These figures alone don't prove fraud,” Dana warned.
“I know.”
“But see this?” Dana pointed to a line labeled outside program services. “It was nearly zero when your father was alive. Now it is more than one hundred thousand dollars for the year.”
Emily compared it with last year's donor newsletter. The newsletter praised increased outreach, promising that contributions would go directly toward education. It did not identify a new service provider.
“Was this reviewed by an independent accountant?” she asked.
Dana shook her head. “Not while I was there. Eleanor said an audit would waste scholarship money.”
They were seated in Dana's kitchen. A nursing textbook lay on the counter next to a grocery receipt marked with careful arithmetic. Leah was studying at the dining table with headphones on. She glanced up when she heard her name, then returned to her notes.
Emily found the sight harder to bear than her mother's insults. The fund's promises had entered an ordinary household and shaped what a young person believed she could afford.
“Leah knows we're investigating?” Emily asked.
“She knows the award was withdrawn without a reason that makes sense.”
Dana lowered her voice. “She also knows I was afraid to challenge it while I still worked with the fund. We talked about that.”
Emily looked at the books and receipts. “And what did she say?”
“That she could handle bad news. She couldn't handle being told she imagined the promise.”
Emily recognized that wound.
At 8:42 p.m., Ruth forwarded a response from the foundation's attorney. It offered a limited inspection in three weeks, at the foundation office, with copies prohibited unless specifically approved.
It also claimed that Emily had been removed as a voting director the previous December.
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Attached as proof was a one-page resolution with an unfamiliar date and a familiar signature.
This time the forged name belonged to Ben.
