The thermal imaging report for the commercial bakery on Locust Street showed a heat signature of four hundred degrees behind the drywall, three hours after the fire was supposedly extinguished. I tapped my thumbnail against my phone screen, watching the cursor blink on my desktop monitor. A rekindle claim was always a mess of overlapping liabilities, and I had three more files to audit before the end of my shift.
My mother sat in the visitor chair across from my desk, smoothing her grey wool skirt with both palms. Her posture was perfectly erect, her coat folded over her arm as if she were waiting for a concert to begin rather than sitting in a beige claims office.
“It is a matter of cash flow, Nora,” she said, her voice carrying its usual light, polished cadence. “Just a minor alignment of dates.”
“The recurring transfer is scheduled for the first of the month, Mom,” I said, looking back at the bakery file. “That is five days away. The system processes it automatically on the first.”
She adjusted her leather handbag on her lap, centering the gold clasp. “We just need a little cushion this month, Nora, with your father’s new medication.”
“Is his heart medication fluctuating again?” I asked.
“It is simply a matter of timing,” she said, offering a small, tight smile that did not reach her eyes. “If you could initiate the three thousand six hundred dollars manually today, it would save us quite a bit of embarrassment at the pharmacy.”
I looked at the claim details on my screen, calculating the depreciation on a commercial oven. Eleven years of these payments had trained me to view my family’s budget like a high-risk policy, always teetering on the edge of a total loss. I had stepped in when my father’s business closed, and the rescue had somehow became a permanent line item in my own ledger.
“I can do a manual transfer tonight when I get home,” I said.
Miriam stood up, her skirt falling into neat, unwrinkled lines. “Thank you, dear. It is such a comfort to know we can rely on your precision.”
