He disconnected.
Margaret emailed at 12:43 a.m.
She attached three archived grant authorizations retained by Hart Trust governance counsel.
I inspected the first.
My submission.
My proposed budget.
The authorization trail.
Approved.
Second.
Approved.
Third.
Approved.
I compared them against screenshots Sloane showed at an internal review weeks before.
The authorization codes were absent.
Not denied.
Simply erased.
My stomach clenched.
I recalled the meeting.
Sloane had sat across from me and asked, “Are you sure you submitted these properly?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m looking at the system.”
“So am I.”
Yet when I logged in, the statuses read “Pending Executive Authorization.”
I assumed I’d made a mistake.
Camden had been furious.
“You keep putting me in impossible positions,” he’d said afterward.
I’d apologized.
The recollection stung, because I had accepted blame without knowing the underlying record had been altered.
I’d apologized for somebody else’s alteration.
