Page 133 of In the Dark of the Past

River came out of the front room twenty minutes later. Her face was composed in the way it was when she’d made a decision and was carrying it cleanly.

“Atlas told me,” she said.

“I know.”

“He opened an account in my father’s name.” She said it the way she said things she was processing as fact before she processed them as feeling. “Four months after the misconduct proceedings. Which means either he had already decided that he might need to revive the narrative, or he was building the frame in advance as insurance.”

“Yes.”

“Both options mean he was managing my father actively, not reactively. Not responding to something my father did, but directing what happened to him.”

“Yes.”

She looked at me, and something moved through her face. It wasn’t grief exactly, more like the thing that came after grief had been processed enough times that you could look at it directly. Anger that was clean rather than raw. The kind that was useful.

“He made my father the story,” she said. “So that no one would look at the story behind the story.”

“That’s right.”

“And now he’s doing it again.” She paused. “To us.”

“He is,” I said. “But it’s not going to work.”

“Because we have the annex records,” she said. “The actual transfer documents, the actual authorizations. If he files a fabricated transfer to my father’s account, we can pull the original MR-7 records and show it’s not there. That the account was opened after the Fund’s primary disbursement cycles, that it’s not in any of the documented targets.”

“I’m sure Solis is already on it,” I said.

“Good.” She exhaled once, slow and deliberate. “Evan’s statement is strong. He’s going to be okay in that room. He just needed someone to tell him that what he witnessed matters, not what he participated in. They’re different things.”

I looked at her.

“You’re good at this,” I said.

She blinked, like the observation had caught her off guard. “It’s my job.”

“I know,” I said. “You’re still good at it.”

A moment passed. She looked at the window, at the pines in the morning light, at something I couldn’t see.

“I’ve been thinking about my job,” she said. “What it looks like after this. Whether I stay or⁠—”

The sentence hung there. I didn’t finish it for her. I waited.

“I honestly don’t know yet,” she said. “I haven’t let myself think about after. It’s felt too close to assuming we’d get there.”

“We’re getting there,” I said.

She looked at me. “You’re sure?”

“About the case, yes. About what comes after…” I held her gaze. “I have some thoughts. But I’m waiting for you to have them, too.”

Something shifted in her expression.

“Okay,” she said quietly.

“Okay,” I echoed.

Atlas appeared in the doorway with his jacket on. “Solis wants both of you. The Bennett account transfer records just came back from the bank.”