By midday, Salma had erased the signature line on the mortgage paper with a soft pencil, as if she wanted to make the contract unreadable until her mind returned to its proper place. She left the form in the document box, told Leila to use the time to call the college, and went out into the tenants' courtyard.
The courtyard lay between six houses built in two rows. Laundry lines hung overhead, two children played with a worn-out tire, and a water pipe leaked beside the back wall. This was where Yusuf had taught Hassan to collect rent. After the funeral, Hassan had taken the notebook, the tenants' phone numbers, and the room keys. Salma had not objected. She had food to prepare, shop debts to face, and grief that made even counting notes feel like heavy work.
A tenant called Mama Rehema approached with her phone in her hand.
“Have you seen Hassan?” she asked.
“Not yet. Why?”
“I want to confirm that I paid.”
Salma looked at her in surprise. “You paid me this month?”
Mama Rehema raised her phone. “I sent it last night. The number you gave me said it was for the house collection.”
Salma took the phone. The payment message showed a date, an amount, and a recipient's name hidden behind a few letters. Beneath the details were the words: ADA-B.
“Whose number did you send it to?”
“Hassan's. He said the change was temporary because the old account had been closed.”
“Did he give you that information in writing?”
Mama Rehema shook her head. “He said you knew.”
Salma felt her stomach tighten. She handed back the phone and asked her tenant in the second house to come out. The man, Jafari, appeared carrying a basket of tomatoes. When she asked him, he produced two paper receipts. One was for the previous month, the other for the month before that. Both bore Hassan's hand stamp, but the payments had gone to the same number Salma had never seen in her notebook.
“Why did you pay this number instead of the one written here?” Salma asked, opening the rent notebook.
Jafari stepped closer. “This is the number Hassan sent me. He said it was temporary. I do not want a quarrel, Mama Salma. I have paid.”
“I did not say you had not.”
“But now you are asking whether my payment arrived.”
Salma said nothing. That was what hurt. The tenants were not responsible for understanding her family's secrets. They needed to know who collected the rent, where to get a receipt, and whether another person would come tomorrow demanding the same money. If the system had changed, she should have been the first to know.
Hassan appeared around the corner of the courtyard carrying a small bag of electrical supplies.
“Why are you holding a meeting here?” he asked.
“This is not a meeting. It is an accounting.”
She threw him the notebook. “Mama Rehema paid through the number you gave her.”
Hassan did not open the notebook. “I have been collecting on your behalf.”
“Through which number?”
“I told you the old account had a problem.”
“You told me a few payments were late. You did not tell me you had moved the entire system.”
“I moved it temporarily.”
“For how long?”
The two tenants nearby began pretending to arrange buckets, though their ears were turned toward them. Hassan glanced at them and lowered his voice.
“Mama, these matters do not need to be discussed in front of them.”
“They happened in front of them. Money left their phones and entered a number you never explained to me.”
Hassan opened the notebook angrily. “Everything is in order. I saved all the messages.”
“Then show me.”
He took out his phone and scrolled through several messages, but his finger moved quickly over the screen. Salma saw the tenants' names, amounts, and dates. There was no total list, no account number connected to the house, and no record showing that the money had entered the family expenses.
“Did you enter all these payments in the notebook?”
“Some are still pending.”
“Why?”
“I was waiting for you to approve the mortgage plan. We needed money that could move quickly.”
“Rent is not a pocket for you to move around.”
Hassan gave a bitter laugh. “I have paid the builders, electricity, and your medicines. Now you are making me a thief because I tried to help?”
Salma held his gaze. “I am asking where the money is. I am not calling you a thief.”
“When you ask in front of the tenants, that is what it means.”
Mama Rehema gripped her bag. “I do not want to be the cause of a quarrel. If there is a new number, I will use it. If I must pay again, tell me.”
Salma turned to all the tenants. “No one will pay twice. Today we will copy every message. From now on, every payment will go through one channel that I will give you in writing, and every tenant will receive a dated receipt.”
Hassan stepped forward. “You cannot change the system without knowing the cost.”
“I can change the system because the property is mine.”
“Baba left me in charge.”
“He left you to help me. He did not leave you to hide things from me.”
The words were out before Salma could regret them, and she did not take them back. Hassan turned and walked toward the rear house. She did not follow. She sat on the bench beneath the guava tree, collected the tenants' receipts, and arranged them by date. As the papers fell into order, she saw that the payments marked ADA-B were not from one person. The name appeared in Mama Rehema's message from the previous month, in Jafari's receipt, and in two payments that Yusuf's notebook had left unexplained.
Salma called Hassan back.
“What does this name, ADA-B, belong to?”
Hassan did not answer. He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.
“It is an internal reference,” he said at last.
“Internal to what?”
“Do not turn everything into a case.”
“I do not want a case. I want to know why the tenants' rent is being sent with a description I have never seen.”
Hassan looked at her for a long time. Then he said, “If you keep digging, you will not like what you find.”
Salma closed the rent notebook and held the bundle of receipts against her chest. The mortgage contract was still closed inside the house, but now she knew that even before signing it, there was a hole in the property's income. When she opened Mama Rehema's old message to save it, one line of the description looked back at her.
The old payment was marked: ADA-B.
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