The kitchen began receiving smaller deliveries although resident numbers remained steady.
A freezer broke and was not repaired.
Staff were told that donated food could no longer be accepted without a management certificate, but nobody provided the necessary forms.
Residents started eating in their rooms because the dining hall was being used to store construction equipment.
Ada asked who had authorized these changes.
Philip Whitcomb referred her to an operations director named Leonard Pike.
Leonard promised the problems would end after renovation.
One night Ada heard two residents arguing because they had been told to sign blank forms to secure their new accommodation.
She confronted Leonard in the hallway.
He told her that no transfer would occur until the legal work was complete.
Two days later she found her position eliminated.
“They made it impossible to run the home properly, then pointed to the damage as proof the home should close,” she said.
Arthur lowered his eyes.
“I should have been there more often.”
“You were caring for your wife,” Ada replied.
“They knew she was dying, and they used the time.”
Caleb had never heard about Arthur’s wife.
Arthur explained that Miriam had spent nearly a year undergoing treatment, and he had stepped back from daily administration during that period.
He had trusted Philip to handle routine decisions.
The signatures appeared while Arthur was away from Boston attending medical appointments with her.
Ada took an old menu board from behind her refrigerator.
On the back were handwritten meal counts for the last eleven days of operations.
The numbers did not match the attendance figures submitted to donors.
The board alone could not prove fraud, but it gave investigators a new set of dates to examine.
Ada had kept it because some residents wrote notes on it when the kitchen closed.
One message simply read that the soup was better than the weather.
Arthur ran a finger near the lettering without touching it.
Caleb understood that the records were not just numbers.
They were traces of people who had once been welcomed by name.
Chapter 14: A Complaint with His Father Name
A package arrived at Denise’s apartment without a return address.
Inside was a photocopy of a complaint letter signed Jonah Foster.
The letter alleged that Northbridge staff had falsely reported resident transport and that management had ignored requests for confirmation.
Caleb read it twice before realizing the signature was not his father’s.
The letter used Jonah’s middle initial incorrectly.
