Chapter 6 - THE FILE GENEVIEVE KEPT
Genevieve came to my clinic the following Thursday, fifteen minutes before closing. She stood by the reception desk twisting the handle of her handbag, her cream coat damp from sleet. Dana offered to tell her I had already left. I almost accepted. Then I noticed a flash drive hanging from Genevieve's keys, marked with the blue compass logo from our father's office.
I brought her into an empty treatment room and left the door open. "You have ten minutes," I said. She looked at the exercise bands on the wall rather than at me. "Dad told me you were making accusations." I waited. She swallowed. "He says he had nothing to do with the crash. He says your lawyer is trying to make a bigger case because the paper put your name everywhere."
"Why did you mention dispatch emails?" I asked. Genevieve closed her fist around the flash drive. She had done bookkeeping at Vale Routing for years before starting her own event business. She explained that she still helped with quarterly records when the office was short staffed. After the crash, our father had asked her to pull archived messages about the I-80 shipment. She had seen a warning about Samuel Pike's rest break.
"When?" I asked. She said the Tuesday after the collision, three days before the funeral. The room seemed to narrow. I gripped the edge of the treatment table until the vinyl creaked. "He knew the company was connected before he told me he couldn't come." Genevieve's eyes filled. "He said it didn't mean anything. He said going to the funeral while investigators were asking questions might look like an admission."
I stepped away from her. For months I had believed they had chosen a birthday dinner over three funerals. That part remained true. Now I understood another choice beneath it. My father had worried about how standing next to his grieving daughter might appear to people examining his business. He had been willing to leave me alone in that church because being seen with me frightened him.
"And you?" I asked. Genevieve studied her hands. "I believed him about the company," she said. "I told myself the birthday dinner was already planned. I kept thinking I'd call after things calmed down." Her explanation contained no demand that I forgive her. That made it harder to interrupt. "You posted pictures," I said. She nodded once, eyes fixed on the floor.
Genevieve had kept a copy of the archive after noticing that some messages disappeared from the shared folder. She said she had not altered it, though Nadia would need to check what it contained and how it had been copied. Our father did not know she still had it. "Why bring it now?" I asked. She turned the flash drive over in her fingers. "Because I heard him tell Martin you weren't well enough to stop him."
I did not take the drive. I called Nadia from the room and put the phone on speaker. Nadia asked Genevieve to leave the device untouched and bring it to her office with its original packaging and any dates she could remember. She also explained that investigators would need a clear record of where it came from. Genevieve agreed. Before she left, she paused at the doorway and looked back.
"I saw the photograph in your hall," she said. "They were so much bigger than the last time I saw them." I wanted to tell her that Penelope had learned to ride a bicycle and Theo could say the names of every moon in the science book Christopher bought him. I also wanted her out of my sight. I said nothing. Some truths deserve more than the ten minutes a guilty person finally makes available.
That evening, my mother called Evelyn. She said I was becoming paranoid, shutting out my family, and letting lawyers "turn me against everyone." Evelyn listened until she heard my mother suggest an evaluation for decision-making capacity. Then Evelyn told her clearly that grief did not erase my right to make choices. My mother ended the call and sent me a message saying Evelyn was taking advantage of me.
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I sat at the kitchen table with the notebook of memories open in front of me. Penelope had once asked whether grown-ups always knew when they were wrong. I had told her I hoped so. Now I wondered what she would have made of adults who knew and looked for a way to keep going anyway. I wrote down Genevieve's visit while it was fresh, including the exact words she used.
At eleven that night, Nadia called. Genevieve had delivered the drive and signed a statement about its history. An independent examiner would make a forensic copy before anyone reviewed the files. Nadia sounded cautious, but beneath her measured tone I heard the urgency. "Clara," she said, "there may be records that explain who knew about the driver's hours before he reached the highway." I looked toward the photograph in the hall and told her to follow them.
