the sofa in their family room? And speaking of Sunday school, how would the parents of her other students feel when they found out she’d spent the night in a widower’s house?
You’re a grown-up, they’d scold, why didn’t you check the weather before it got too hazardous to drive? To which she’d reply, Well, if they don’t think any better of me than that…
Still, others might say that she’d subconsciously allowed herself to get waylaid at Noah’s house. Some would no doubt think it hadn’t been unconscious at all, that she’d deliberately gotten stranded, miles from home, on one of the worst weather nights of the year.
Dara sighed. Because, in all honesty she didn’t know which scenario was true.
She was standing at the stove when she heard him coming down the hall. “How do you take your tea?” she asked when he came in from the small home office adjacent to the kitchen.
He carried a thick accordion file under his arm. “No hot chocolate?”
“I figured you’d suggested it only on my behalf.”
Grinning, he said, “You figured right.”
“So…?” She pointed to the mug
He hesitated a moment before saying, “Strong and black.”
She wondered about the tick in time that had passed before he answered. But his response had been what she’d expected: no frills, just like Noah himself.
“Sorry it took so long up there. The kids get a little wordy sometimes.”
It isn’t like I was going anywhere, she wanted to say, not with a foot and a half of snow on the ground. “I didn’t mind,” she said, instead. “I made myself comfortable in the family room. It’s very warm and cozy in there.”
“Then what say we bring the—” He frowned at the file. “How about if we drink our tea in the family room?”
The way he’d stopped midsentence Dara knew he hadn’t said what he’d intended. His serious expression told her it wouldn’t be long until he did.
She carried their mugs into the family room. While she’d waited for him to tuck the children in, Dara had decided the big overstuffed recliner in the corner was Noah’s. Her father had had a favorite chair, and it, too, had that certain comfortably worn quality. She put one mug on the table beside it, placed the other on the coffee table and nodded at the file. “What’s that?” she asked, sitting on the end of the couch nearest his chair.
“Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” he said, sliding a manila folder from the file. “But before I show you what’s in here, I want you to know I feel terrible about this.”
Why did his tone of voice, his choice of words, remind her of when her father used to begin her childhood scoldings with “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”?
“I gave a lot of thought to what you’d said the other day in your father’s office, that he wasn’t the kind of man who could steal.”
Dara’s heart hammered; her palms grew moist. This was going to be much more serious than any reprimand her dad had ever doled out.
“I never had the pleasure of meeting him,” Noah continued, “but his reputation as an honest businessman was well-known…and well-deserved, from everything I’ve heard. That’s what prompted me to take another look into this matter of…of embezzlement.”
Embezzlement. The word echoed loudly, harshly, in her ears, like the deep, repeating grate of the school’s fire alarm.
“You sounded so sure of his innocence,” Noah said, “that it made me believe if I dug deep enough, looked long enough, I might just find the proof you were talking about, proof that would clear his name.”
“You’re not going to believe this, but…”
“But what?”
“I came here tonight hoping to discuss that very thing with you.”
His furrowed brow told her he still didn’t understand.
“I was hoping you’d go to work for me, looking for…looking for—”
“Proof that would clear your father’s name?” he repeated.
Dara nodded. “You didn’t find it, did you?”
His somber expression was her answer.
Noah took a deep breath, handed Dara the file. “I didn’t leave a stone unturned. I checked into everything. No one escaped my scrutiny, not the board of directors, not Kurt Turner, not the bookkeeper or even the secretary.” Noah paused, still frowning. “Only a handful of people had access to that money, and each one of them could account for every cent.” He met her eyes, his frown intensifying slightly. “The trail deadends at your father’s door.”
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