The brightly colored poster board, covered in glitter and construction paper cut-outs, sat on the kitchen counter. Lily hummed as she meticulously glued a small, fuzzy pom-pom onto a cardboard rocket.
It was Career Day at Lily’s elementary school, and she was making a project about “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.” She’d chosen “Space Explorer.”
“Daddy went to my class today,” Lily chirped, not looking up from her project. “He talked about numbers! Big, big numbers!”
A pang went through me. Garrett was still her daddy, the charming, successful one who visited schools for Career Day. I was the one who was suddenly “on leave.”
Meanwhile, Arthur Finch, a mild-mannered financial analyst from Argus Securities, was helping out at Lily’s school, completely unaware of the Caldwell family drama. He was there to talk about the stock market, a dry subject for most nine-year-olds.
Lily, ever observant, had found him during a break. She was working on a small math puzzle, frustrated by a particularly tricky sequence of sums.
“Mr. Finch?” she’d asked, tugging on his sleeve. “Daddy has a secret game with Mr. Novak. He showed me once when I was allowed to stay up late.”
Arthur Finch had politely bent down, curious. “Oh? A game with numbers?”
“Yes!” Lily exclaimed, her eyes wide. “They always change, like magic! Daddy makes them look bigger for his big meetings, but Mr. Novak writes down the *real* numbers in a secret book. It’s like a secret numbers game!”
Arthur Finch had chuckled, chalking it up to a child’s vivid imagination, a fanciful explanation for something boring like accounting. He’d even given her a small, encouraging smile.
But somewhere, in the methodical filing cabinet of his analytical mind, that innocent comment about “magic numbers” and “Mr. Novak” found a tiny, quiet corner, a seed of doubt planted without him even realizing it.
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