Chapter 5 - What Angela Hid in My Drawings

The sketchbook was still at the house I had fled. That fact sat between me and Maya like a locked door.

“I can't go back there,” I said.

“You don't have to,” she answered. “We can seek a lawful way to recover your personal property. Let me handle that.”

I thought of the linen cupboard upstairs, the bottom shelf behind a stack of winter blankets. I had hidden the book there because Derek once laughed at a drawing of a public library and asked why a woman who didn't work still needed professional ambitions.

I hadn't opened it in nearly a year.

Maya spoke with Derek's attorney about collecting personal belongings. He objected, claiming the house contained proprietary documents. Maya did not argue over the phone. She requested a supervised exchange with a clear inventory and kept a record of the refusal. Two days later, through the legal arrangement she secured, I was permitted to recover listed personal effects without confronting Derek.

Emma drove me to the house. I sat in her car while a neutral supervisor and an authorized mover collected the boxes Maya had identified. Watching someone else enter the front door made me feel simultaneously relieved and displaced. I'd chosen the curtains in that house. I'd planted lavender beside the front steps. Yet I could not bear to cross its threshold.

The sketchbook came out in a sealed plastic storage box beside old diplomas and winter clothing.

I opened it at Emma's kitchen table with Maya present. The first pages showed a community library with a curved glass entrance, a riverfront pavilion, and a small shelter I had imagined for women leaving difficult homes. I had once been proud of those designs. Derek had convinced me they were impractical fantasies.

Midway through the pages was a folded square of thin blue paper.

I remembered Angela's hand now. At the gala, Derek had been displaying my sketches to a patron as evidence of my artistic talents, a compliment that sounded generous while it reminded me he preferred my work to remain a hobby. Angela had approached with a request to borrow a pen. When I opened the book, she slipped the paper into the back pocket and murmured, “Keep that where no one else will find it.”

At the time, I'd thought she was referring to a contact number or an invitation. Later, when Derek ordered me to destroy the sketchbook, I had concealed it without examining the pocket.

The paper contained a sequence of dates, invoice numbers, and initials. At the bottom, in a rushed hand, Angela had written: Ask for the original approvals. Do not trust the summaries.

It wasn't proof of a crime. Maya emphasized that immediately. It was a lead, though, and it gave Helen specific transactions to compare against original records.

Angela met us the following morning in a conference room at Maya's office. She was wearing a plain gray coat and looked more tired than she had at the gala. She recognized me at once.

“I wondered if you had kept it,” she said.

“Why didn't you tell me what it was?”

“Because Derek was beside you every time I tried to speak. I wasn't sure whether you would repeat it to him.”

The answer hurt, although I knew why she had doubted me. From the outside, I had appeared to support every decision my husband made. I had been smiling in photographs while trying not to make him angry.

Angela explained that she had questioned invoices attributed to North Quay and found inconsistencies between work supposedly completed and equipment the youth center had actually received. She documented concerns internally, then lost access to her accounts after challenging the program's former contracting administrator. She had left and reported the discrepancies through formal channels, but the process moved slowly.

“Why the sketchbook?” Maya asked.

“Derek had been warning everyone that records were being misplaced by careless staff. He watched my briefcase at the gala. He didn't notice Emily's drawings.”

My fingers tightened around the book. An object he had dismissed as worthless had held a question he did not want asked.

Angela said she did not know whether Derek had personally diverted money. She did know his signature appeared on some disputed authorizations and that several invoice descriptions did not match the underlying work orders. The truth would require documents, independent verification, and people willing to testify.

Alexander did not attend that meeting. Later, Helen confirmed that the foundation was cooperating with independent auditors and appropriate authorities. I was relieved not to have to depend on a mafia boss's private judgment of guilt.

By evening, Derek's attorney sent a letter alleging that I had concealed business records among my belongings. Maya responded by preserving the sketchbook and documenting exactly when and how it had been recovered. I had the original pages scanned without removing the folded note.

Then Derek called Emma's number.

We let it go to voicemail. His message was composed, almost tender.

“Emily, I know you're frightened. You've been listening to people who don't care about you. We can fix this privately. I just need you to bring back what belongs to me.”

When the recording ended, Emma looked at me. “He didn't ask whether you're safe.”

I had noticed that too.

The next morning we learned from the accountant that two of the invoice numbers on Angela's note corresponded to payments signed off the week Derek had demanded that I accompany him to a rural property outside Chicago. He had said the trip was for a possible investment and insisted I remain in the car while he met a man inside an unfinished building.

I'd forgotten most of that afternoon, because nothing dramatic appeared to happen. We had stopped for coffee on the way home. Derek was unusually cheerful. For two days afterward he bought me gifts, as though he were celebrating something I hadn't been invited to understand.

Maya asked what I remembered of the building. I described its red brick facade, temporary fencing, and an unfinished sign with the words East Harbor.

Helen compared my description to public project records. The site was a planned educational center. Construction had stopped after funding shortages were reported.

My sketchbook lay open on the table while we discussed it. The first design on its pages was an educational center with wide windows and classrooms arranged around a courtyard. I had drawn it years before meeting Derek.

For a moment I couldn't speak. The project on the records was not exactly my design, but it had the same distinctive central courtyard and angled entrance. It might have been coincidence or common architectural practice. I needed to know whether Derek had seen it.

Then Helen enlarged an archival presentation from the initiative's public website. On the final page, above a rendering of the unbuilt center, the design was credited to an outside consultancy that had worked with Derek.

I stared at the image.

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The rendering included the narrow garden walkway I had sketched by hand, even though that detail hadn't appeared in the public plans I'd ever shown anyone.

Someone had used my design. And the name attached to it was not mine.