Mara was quiet, then said the sentence that stayed with him afterward. "Do you know what this does to a small farm? It doesn't just take money. It teaches you to doubt every good thing you thought you did right."
The regional review meeting was scheduled for two that afternoon. Nadine invited Samuel as the cooperative representative, Tessa as a former receiving employee and witness, Malik as the person who preserved HG4417, and Priya as the quality specialist who had examined the held shipment. Graham attended with a human resources representative and a lawyer of his choosing. The purpose of the meeting was to establish facts and interim controls, not to produce a public verdict, and Nadine made certain everyone understood that before a single document was displayed.
Tessa arrived wearing the blouse she normally saved for job interviews. She had not slept much, and she felt out of place entering the regional office without a Bridgeville badge. The receptionist asked for her identification and gave her a visitor card, a small exchange that hurt more than Tessa had expected. Seventeen years of knowing almost every corridor in the company had become a morning of waiting for someone to unlock a meeting room.
Samuel stood when she entered. She noticed the gesture and sat at the opposite side of the table from him, where she could see the screen without feeling she had joined his team. She had brought her notebook and the copies she made at the library. When Graham entered, he looked at her folder and gave a small humorless smile.
"You went through a lot of trouble," he said.
"So did the growers," Tessa answered.
The meeting began with the original record for Lot 309. Oliver described the software's design, then showed the complete event sequence. Nadine asked Tessa to confirm her shift and receiving actions, and Tessa referred to her own notes before answering. She had arrived at the dock shortly before the truck, checked the paperwork, and accepted the delivery with the observations the record showed.
"Did you perform a later inspection that evening?" Nadine asked.
"No. I left at four-thirty."
"Did you authorize a supplier-fault rejection at seven-sixteen?"
"No."
Graham's lawyer asked whether a manager had the right to correct an employee's receiving decision. Oliver answered that managers could change a status when there was a documented reason, such as a later inspection discovering a real defect or an intake entry made incorrectly. The audit log itself did not prove every possible reason was absent, but no supporting inspection document had been located for the twelve highlighted changes. The difference between a permitted correction and an unsupported alteration became the center of the meeting.
"A manager can correct a mistake," Graham said. "The system allows it."
"Then where are your follow-up inspection records?" Tessa asked.
Graham looked at Nadine. "She's not conducting this meeting."
"Answer the question through your counsel if you prefer," Nadine said. "It's a relevant question."
Graham described a store facing repeated loss and limited staffing. He said produce could look acceptable at intake and deteriorate by the end of a shift, and that it was sometimes necessary to adjust the status of a delivery before purchasing closed its daily accounting. Nadine asked why a later deterioration caused by storage or store handling would automatically become supplier fault rather than store shrink. Graham answered that the distinction was not always clear.