Chapter 4 - Closed Doors at the Foundation Office
The rain had stopped by the time I parked the car in the underground garage of the foundation tower, leaving the air smelling of wet asphalt and damp concrete. My fingers still felt stiff on the steering wheel, and the weight of the folded white note in my breast pocket pressed against my ribs like a lead weight. Her sister in the neighboring state had given me nothing but slammed doors and clipped denials, protecting Candace with a wall of silence that left me stranded. With nowhere else to look among family, I drove back toward the city center under the pale glow of streetlights, heading for the place where Candace had spent her days before the nursery was even painted: the charitable foundation office on the fifth floor of the downtown pavilion.
The building was locked for the night, its massive glass doors dark and reflecting my own hollow expression. I didn't knock or call management. Instead, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my ring of keys, sliding my personal executive keycard into the side security entrance. The reader blinked a steady green, and the heavy metal door clicked open with a muffled mechanical thrum. The lobby was dead quiet, save for the hum of the climate control and the distant drip of a pipe somewhere in the basement. I stepped inside, letting the door latch shut behind me, and walked straight to the elevators. The brass doors parted instantly, and I rode up to the fifth floor in total silence, watching the floor numbers light up in amber sequence.
When the elevator chimed, I stepped out onto the familiar loop of dark blue carpeting. The foundation office was wrapped in shadows, the rows of empty mahogany desks casting long, distorted shapes across the floor under the faint ambient light spilling in from the streetlamps outside. I walked past the reception desk where Candace had greeted donors and organizers, her smile captured in dozens of brochures still stacked neatly on the counter. My shoes made no sound on the heavy wool carpet as I headed down the row of private offices toward hers at the far end of the hall.
Her door was unlocked—she often stayed late finishing grant proposals—and I pushed it open, stepping into the small, orderly space that still carried the faint scent of her perfume mixed with paper and printer ink. The leather chair was pushed neatly under the desk. A ceramic mug sat near the corner, half-filled with coffee that had long since gone cold. I didn't turn on the overhead lights; instead, I clicked on the small green-shaded desk lamp, keeping the illumination low and localized.
I sat down in her chair, the leather creaking slightly in the quiet room. Her desktop computer was asleep, the monitor dark. I moved the mouse, and the screen flickered to life, demanding a password. I tried her birthday, our anniversary, combinations of numbers we'd used for years, but each attempt was met with a shaking red prompt. Frustration tightened my chest, but I forced my breathing to slow down, remembering how methodical she always was. I looked around the desk—the wooden pen holder, the framed photograph of us taken during a trip to the coast two summers ago, the stack of incoming mail sorted by urgency.
Beneath a leather desk blotter, I noticed the corner of a white paper envelope sticking out. I slid it free and opened the flap. Inside wasn't a letter, but a printed train ticket receipt. My eyes scanned the text in the dim green light. One-way ticket, leaving the central station at dawn, destination marked for a small coastal town two hours north by rail. The date on the receipt was from yesterday morning—just hours before we returned home from the charity gala to find an empty nursery.
Before I could fold the receipt and put it in my pocket, a beam of light swept across the glass partition of her office. Footsteps echoed heavily on the carpet outside, accompanied by the jingle of keys and a low voice muttering to itself.
"Hello? Who's in there?" the night security guard called out, his voice bouncing off the high white-trimmed walls of the open office area.
May you like
I didn't answer. I grabbed the receipt, shoved it deep into my coat pocket, and slipped out the side door of her office into the adjoining conference room. Moving quickly and quietly through the shadows, I slipped past the pantry and out toward the emergency stairwell just as the beam of a flashlight swept across the doorway I had vacated seconds earlier. I pushed through the heavy metal fire door, letting it click shut behind me, and hurried down the concrete steps to the basement garage, my heart hammering against my ribs as I reached my car and pulled away into the empty city streets.
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