When He Finally Chose Me I Was Gone novel · Chapter 19 of 32
Chapter 19: The Auditor
Soren's POV
The auditor asked for a closed door, and I gave her the small conference room on the fourteenth floor.
She was a gray-haired woman in a navy suit who had spent thirty years reading other people's books.
She put one sheet of paper on the table and turned it so I could read it.
"I'd like you to look at this before I look at your face," she said. "I find I'm more honest that way."
It was a list of payments.
There were one hundred and eight lines, one for each month, running back nine years to the week Astrid had been hired.
The payee on every line was the same.
A. Maddox, rescuer's retainer.
"It's not in the foundation's budget," the auditor said. "It's not on any board minute. It comes out of the discretionary account that your mother signs, and it's coded as a family honorarium."
"How much?"
"Five thousand a month, plus a bonus every August."
I did the sum in my head, and then I did it again.
"That's on top of her salary," I said.
"Yes."
"She's lived on it."
"She's lived very well on it." The auditor took her glasses off. "I'm not accusing anybody of theft. Your mother approved it, and it was done openly enough. It's a gratitude payment. But it has no end date, and in nine years nobody asked what the gratitude was for."
I looked at the page.
I had grown up believing that the Lund family owed Astrid a debt it could never repay.
I had never once thought to ask what it had been paid so far.
"Thank you," I said. "Can I keep this?"
"It's yours. I made two copies."
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