Chapter 14
The former employee's name was Ruth Calder, and she had spent eighteen years balancing Lillian's books.
She met June and Dana in a plain conference room rather than a restaurant or a dark parking lot. She brought a folder of messages and the careful reluctance of someone who understood the weight of her own words.
"I don't know who cut a dress," Ruth said at once. "I don't know what was said in that bedroom. I know what I handled at the accounting office."
Dana thanked her for being precise.
Ruth explained that Celeste had requested the studio's financial records in February, saying she was evaluating a sale to protect the children. Ruth asked for authorization from both trustees. Celeste returned the next day with a typed instruction naming herself as an agent. Ruth called June at an old number and got no answer; she then declined to release anything until proper verification.
"Celeste was angry," Ruth said. "She said people who loved those girls wouldn't stand in the way of a solution."
"Did she mention Hale?" Brielle asked.
Ruth's presence made Brielle think about the people who had known her mother outside the family. Lillian was not merely the person in framed photographs, nor the owner of property worth arguing over. She had been somebody's employer, a colleague whose books were kept carefully, a woman who stayed late to redo a hem because a bride was nervous about the fit. Ruth remembered Lillian getting irritated when customers missed appointments and laughing when the old iron hissed at an inconvenient moment.
"She wasn't perfect," Ruth said gently. "She was reliable. There's a difference." Brielle smiled through tears. In the years after her mother's death, she had imagined Lillian as someone who would have known the right answer to every problem. Ruth's stories gave her back a real person, not an impossible standard.
When they left the office, June asked Brielle whether she wanted to keep a list of people willing to testify. Brielle said she would leave that job to Dana. Her decision pleased June more than another hour of obsessive note-taking would have. A child could be involved without becoming the investigator of her own family's misconduct.
They bought sandwiches before returning home. Naomi called to ask whether they had found out who cut the dress. Brielle told her not yet. Then she asked what Naomi had done in art class. The answer involved a clay bird with one wing longer than the other, and they talked about that bird all the way home.
"Not by name. But she asked whether I knew the current appraised value and how quickly the business assets could be separated from the building."
Brielle stared at her. The questions were not about repairs. They were about disposing of a property.
Ruth also produced a copy of Lillian's last annual report, which distinguished building maintenance reserves from money allocated to the girls' education. According to that report, money existed for modest repairs, though updated accounting would be needed to know what remained.
June looked at the reserve figure. "Why did Marcus say we had nothing?"
Ruth folded her hands. "I can't tell you what he was shown."
That was the answer Brielle had learned to respect: a witness stating what she knew and refusing to fill the rest with guesses.
After the interview, Brielle walked with June beneath trees dropping early summer leaves. She admitted that for months she had suspected Celeste was stealing, yet she had also hoped the studio would simply disappear so the arguments would stop.
"Sometimes I hated that place," she said. "Because every time I went there, I came home to another fight."
June stopped walking. "You can love what your mother left and hate what other people did around it. Those feelings don't cancel each other."
Brielle cried then, not loudly, but with a helpless shaking that surprised her. June waited. No one told her she was strong or brave or had to keep moving.
By evening, Dana had incorporated Ruth's records into the disputed-transaction timeline. The sequence was becoming clear: unauthorized accounting requests, misleading claims of debt, pressure on Marcus, efforts to obtain June's signature, and a below-market deal with unusual compensation.
One question remained. Who had physically altered the documents?
Ruth thought for a moment and recalled seeing Celeste carry a small portable scanner into the studio's office on the day of the second request.
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"She said she needed a clean copy of the trust," Ruth told Dana. "I told her we couldn't provide it."
The next day, the public notary named on the affidavit returned Dana's call.
