The Ledger

Naomi didn't remember leaving the office. She remembered the parking garage, the concrete pillars blurring past, and Callum's voice asking if she was okay to drive. She said yes. She was not okay to drive.

That night, after Callum went quiet in his room and the house felt too big and too loud at once, Naomi went looking in the filing cabinet in Gregory's study — the one he'd always called "boring paperwork" whenever she'd asked. She hadn't opened it in years. There'd never been a reason to.

The bank statements went back further than she expected. Monthly transfers, same amount, same recipient: L. Pike. Twenty-four years of them, unbroken, sitting in a folder labeled, in Gregory's cramped handwriting, nothing more than a household maintenance code Naomi had never once questioned.

She did the math twice because she didn't trust it the first time.

The first payment was dated four months before their wedding.

Callum found her on the study floor an hour later, papers fanned around her like a crime scene. He crouched down and picked up a statement without asking, and Naomi watched his face do the same arithmetic hers had.

"Mom," he said carefully. "This doesn't necessarily mean—"

"Don't," Naomi said. "Don't finish that sentence for him."

Callum kept sorting through the folder anyway, the way he'd always processed things — hands busy, mouth quiet — until he stopped on a single sheet near the bottom, one that wasn't a bank statement at all. It was a letter, unfinished, in Gregory's handwriting, dated only three years ago.

It began: *If you're reading this, I ran out of time to tell her myself.*

Callum's voice cracked reading it aloud, and Naomi grabbed the page from his hands to read the rest herself — but the letter cut off mid-sentence, the bottom half of the page torn away.