Page 34 of Reclaimed Roots

"This can't be right,"I muttered, staring at the spreadsheet on my laptop. It was Friday morning. I had been in Sable Point for two weeks, and my brain was fried.

The numbers didn't add up. There was a discrepancy in the books—a sizable gap between the expected revenue from Ever Eden Orchard's sales and the actual amount hitting their accounts.

A knot formed in the pit of my stomach as I cross-referenced the figures against my dad's meticulous records. He had always been so careful when it came to his clients' finances. This kind of glaring error was completely unlike him.

Unless it wasn't an error at all.

My pulse quickened as an unsettling thought took root. What if the orchard's books didn't match Dad's files because someone was deliberately cooking the numbers? Skimming profits, hiding losses, fudging the data to cover their tracks.

I swallowed, my mouth bone dry. No, that couldn't be it. The Evertons were our family's oldest friends, pillars of this community. They'd never do anything so underhanded.

Would they?

A memory from Dad's wake surfaced.

You did what you had to do.

That's what Jasper had said to Elliot. Was this what he meant?

The thought was almost too disturbing to entertain. But the evidence was staring me in the face. Something wasn't adding up with their accounts, and the only logical explanation was fraud.

"Natalie? You okay, honey?"

I jumped at the sound of Jeanette's voice, slamming the laptop shut with more force than intended. She eyed me with concern as I scrambled to compose myself.

"I'm fine," I lied, offering her a tight smile. "Just going over some numbers."

Jeanette nodded, seemingly satisfied. She busied herself with the copy machine, humming softly under her breath.

I screwed up my courage and opened the laptop again. The more I studied the figures, the more glaring the discrepancies became. Tens of thousands of dollars were vanishing into thin air between the orchard's reported sales and the deposits hitting their accounts.

"Jeanette," I began, trying to keep my tone casual, "were you aware of any issues with the Ever Eden account?"

Her brow furrowed. "No, not that I recall. Your fatheralways spoke highly of their operation. Said they ran a tight ship over there."

I nodded absently, chewing my bottom lip. That only deepened the mystery—not to mention my growing unease. Dad trusted the Evertons implicitly, both as clients and as friends. He would never have turned a blind eye to any financial improprieties on their part.

Which meant one of two things was happening: either the Evertons were deliberately defrauding their accountant, a prospect that seemed too outlandish to even consider. Or someone else was manipulating their books behind the scenes.

My mind whirled with unsettling possibilities. Embezzlement, money laundering, ties to organized crime. All the seedy facets of financial malfeasance that I had expected from the cutthroat world of corporate accounting, but nothere. Not in Sable Point.

I screwed my eyes shut, pinching the bridge of my nose as a dull ache blossomed behind my eyes.Get a grip, Natalie. You're spiraling down a rabbit hole of wild speculation.

My mind flitted to Jasper, to the quiet intensity simmering behind those warm brown eyes. Did he know about this? Was he somehow involved?

The thought of him being mixed up in anything illicit made my stomach churn. Then again, I hadn't really known him for years. Maybe he wasn't who I thought he was.

I was preparing to question Jeanette further, but the ring of the office phone cut me off. She shot me an apologetic glancebefore hurrying back out to the front desk to answer it.

Left alone with my racing thoughts, I revisited the damning numbers. I toggled between spreadsheets, scanning rows of data until the figures started to blur together.

It was all there in black and white. Somehow, someway, the orchard was hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate. And based on the timeline, it had been going on for months, draining their coffers like a tiny leak that had finally cracked the dam.

A panicked chill crept over me as the full implications started to sink in. If the Everton's orchard was on the brink of collapse, it could devastate this entire town. Ever Eden was one of the economic pillars of Sable Point, a beloved institution that had been there for generations.

Not to mention the personal toll it would take on the family. They were decent, hard-working people who had poured their blood, sweat, and tears into that land. To see it all crumble around them, to lose their legacy and life's work...

A fresh wave of grief overwhelmed me, quickly followed by a surge of protective instinct. I might have been gone for years, but the Evertons were as much my family as my own flesh and blood. We'd been through too much together for me to turn a blind eye now.

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