PART 2 — THE VOICE FROM 1998
The first voice that came out of the recorder was Colleen’s.
“I am not notarizing a lie for you, Dale.”
Nobody moved.
Colleen’s recorded voice filled the kitchen, followed by the scrape of a chair and Dale’s low, irritated whisper.
“It is not a lie. Marguerite understands what she is signing.”
“No, she does not.”
“She does not need to understand every paragraph.”
Across the table, Paula slowly turned toward her aunt.
Colleen still stood beside the window with her purse hanging from her shoulder.
Her face had gone gray.
Dale pushed back his chair.
“That recording is illegal.”
I kept my finger on the button.
“You told everybody I was deaf,” I said. “Now you are worried I heard too much?”
He reached across the table.
I pulled the recorder against my chest.
“Sit down.”
“Give me that.”
“Sit down, Dale.”
He looked at me the way men like him look at old women when they finally realize age has not made us weak.
It has only made us patient.
Paula stood.
“Dale, sit down.”
He stared at her.
She had never spoken to him that way before.
For a moment, I thought he might laugh.
Instead, he lowered himself back into the chair.
I pressed play again.
Colleen’s voice returned.
“If she signs this page, you become her financial representative.”
“Temporarily.”
“There is no expiration date.”
“I will add one later.”
“And this page releases her claim on the house.”
“She does not have a claim on the house.”
“She paid for half of it.”
“It was a gift.”
“Then why is there a lifetime occupancy agreement with her name on it?”
The room became so quiet that I could hear the clock above the sink.
Paula looked at Dale.
“What occupancy agreement?”
Dale’s jaw tightened.
“Your aunt does not know what she is talking about.”
The recording continued.
Colleen said, “The agreement says Marguerite cannot be removed from this property unless she chooses to leave.”
“She will choose.”
“You are planning to make her sign this without telling her what it is.”
“I am planning to protect my family.”
“From a seventy-six-year-old woman?”
“From losing this house.”
The recorder clicked softly.
Then came the sound of papers being gathered.
Colleen’s recorded voice lowered.
“And the Ridgeway settlement?”
Dale did not answer immediately.
When he finally spoke, his voice was different.
Careful.
Controlled.
“The settlement has nothing to do with this.”
“You told Paula that money still belonged to Marguerite.”
“I told Paula what she needed to hear.”
“Where is the money, Dale?”
The recording stopped.
Not because the conversation had ended.
Because the tape had run out.
Paula looked at me.
Then she looked at her husband.
“What settlement?”
Dale rubbed both hands over his face.
“It is complicated.”
“No,” I said. “It is money.”
He pointed at Colleen.
“She came into our home pretending to help. She has hated your mother for years.”
Colleen finally removed the purse from her shoulder.
She placed it on the table.
“I did hate her,” she said.
Paula looked between us.
“Why?”
Colleen’s eyes met mine for the first time since she had entered the house.
“Because I believed something that was not true.”
My throat tightened.
“What did you believe?”
She opened her purse.
“I believed you stole the Ridgeway house from me.”
Paula whispered, “What?”
Colleen took out a thick brown envelope and placed it beside the roast.
The envelope had already been opened.
My name was printed across the front.
MARGUERITE ELLIS.
Underneath it were the words RIDGEWAY TITLE AND ESCROW.
I recognized the company immediately.
They had handled the sale of my house four years earlier.
Dale reached for the envelope.
Colleen slapped her hand over it.
“Do not.”
His expression changed.
For the first time that afternoon, he looked afraid.
Colleen turned to me.
“Three weeks ago, Dale called me.”
“How did he get your number?”
“He said he found it in your address book.”
The blue address book from my bedside drawer.
The one that had disappeared in May.
Dale had told me I probably threw it away.
“He told me you had cheated me when Dad died,” Colleen continued. “He said there was a second will. He said the Ridgeway house should have been divided between us.”
“That is not true.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Because he showed me the document.”
She pulled several folded pages from the envelope.
“The document was fake.”
Dale laughed once.
A sharp, humorless sound.
“You are suddenly a handwriting expert?”
“No,” Colleen said. “But I know Dad could not have signed something dated six months after he died.”
Paula covered her mouth.
I looked at Dale.
He did not deny it.
Colleen continued.
“He said he would help me recover my half of the house if I notarized several forms.”
“The papers from Thursday,” I said.
She nodded.
“He told me they were part of a family settlement. He said you had agreed to pay me.”
“I never agreed to anything.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you come?”
Her eyes filled.
“Because for four years, I wanted to believe the worst about you.”
The words hurt more than I expected.
Not because she had believed them.
Because a small part of me understood why.
Our father had spent his final years turning his daughters against each other.
He told Colleen I was greedy.
He told me Colleen only visited when she needed money.
At his funeral, grief had done what his lies could not.
It had finished separating us.
Dale had found the crack and pushed his fingers into it.
Colleen slid the documents toward Paula.
“The first form gives Dale power of attorney over your mother’s accounts.”
Paula looked down at it.
“The second one ends her right to live here.”
Paula’s hand began to shake.
“The third one releases any claim she has against the property.”
Dale leaned forward.
“They are drafts.”
“Her name is already typed on them,” Paula said.
“That is how legal documents work.”
“And why is Aunt Colleen listed as the witness?”
Nobody answered.
Paula lifted the final page.
There was an empty signature line at the bottom.
Above it, in large letters, were the words:
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT AND AUTHORIZATION OF PRIOR TRANSACTIONS.
“What prior transactions?” Paula asked.
Colleen reached into the envelope again.
This time, she removed a bank statement.
Dale stood so quickly that his chair fell backward.
“Enough.”
Paula stepped between him and the table.
“Sit down.”
“You have no idea what they are doing.”
“I know exactly what they are doing,” she said. “They are answering questions you should have answered.”
He looked at her as if she had betrayed him.
Maybe, in his mind, she had.
Colleen handed me the statement.
The account was in my name.
I had never seen it before.
At the top was a balance from three months earlier.
$218,640.17.
Underneath it was a deposit labeled RIDGEWAY PROPERTY SETTLEMENT.
My hands went cold.
“What is this?”
Colleen spoke carefully.
“After you sold your house, the county settled a lawsuit involving the land behind Ridgeway Road. There had been an undisclosed drainage easement. Everyone who owned property there during a certain period received compensation.”
I stared at the number.
More than two hundred thousand dollars.
Money I had never known existed.
“The notice came here,” Colleen said.
“Why would it come here?”
“Because this became your legal address when you moved in.”
Paula looked at Dale.
“You opened her mail.”
“I handle the household paperwork.”
“You opened her mail.”
“She leaves everything lying around.”
“I do not,” I said.
He ignored me.
Paula picked up the statement.
“The money was deposited.”
Colleen nodded.
“Into an account opened in Marguerite’s name.”
“I did not open it.”
“No,” Colleen said. “Dale did.”
“That is impossible,” he said.
Colleen removed one final sheet.
“It would have been impossible without this.”
It was a copy of my driver’s license.
The license I had reported missing last winter.
Dale had driven me to the motor vehicle office to replace it.
He had complained about the line for two hours.
I looked at the signature on the account application.
It resembled mine.
But the M was too narrow.
The final E leaned backward.
My husband used to joke that my signature looked like a row of fence posts after a storm.
This one was too neat.
Too careful.
It was a practiced imitation.
“He forged my name.”
Dale’s face reddened.
“I deposited money that belonged to you.”
“Where is it?”
His eyes moved toward Paula.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
So did Colleen.
Paula lowered the statement.
“Where is her money?”
“I invested it.”
“In what?”
“This house.”
My heart began pounding.
“You already had my money in this house.”
“It needed repairs.”
“The roof was replaced through insurance,” Paula said.
“There were other expenses.”
“Two hundred eighteen thousand dollars of expenses?”
Dale pushed away from the table.
“I do not have to stand here and be interrogated in my own home.”
He headed toward the hallway.
Colleen spoke behind him.
“It is not in the house.”
He stopped.
She reached into her purse again and removed a small black notebook.
“I checked the transaction numbers.”
Dale turned slowly.
“You had no right.”
“You left the statement in your car while you went inside to get the papers.”
“What did you do?” Paula asked.
“I photographed every page.”
Dale took one step toward her.
Colleen did not move.
“The money went into an account belonging to Northstar Residential Holdings.”
Paula frowned.
“What is that?”
Dale said nothing.
Colleen opened the notebook.
“The company was formed eighteen months ago. It owns a condominium forty minutes from here.”
Paula’s face changed.
“A condominium?”
“Unit 8C at Lake Briar.”
Dale looked toward the back door.
I remembered his trips to the garage every night at nine forty.
Twenty-five minutes.
Long enough to make a phone call.
Long enough to speak to someone he did not want Paula to hear.
Colleen turned another page.
“The condominium is occupied by a woman named Vanessa Cole.”
Dale whispered, “Stop.”
Paula gripped the edge of the table.
“Who is Vanessa?”
Colleen looked at him.
“The woman Dale listed as the emergency contact on the company paperwork.”
“Who is she?”
Dale said nothing.
Paula’s voice broke.
“Who is she, Dale?”
He turned toward his wife.
For one brief second, the anger left his face.
What replaced it was worse.
Pity.
The kind of pity people give you when they know your life is about to divide into before and after.
“Vanessa is nobody.”
Colleen closed the notebook.
“She has a six-year-old son.”
Paula stared at her.
“No.”
“His birth certificate lists no father.”
“No.”
“But Dale pays his school tuition. His medical insurance comes through Dale’s company. And last month, Northstar Residential Holdings purchased a second property.”
My daughter’s lips parted, but no sound came out.
Dale moved toward her.
“Paula, listen to me.”
She stepped backward.
“Do not touch me.”
“It is not what you think.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
He glanced at the recorder.
At the papers.
At me.
Then toward the back door again.
I knew that look.
He was calculating distance.
Keys.
Excuses.
Escape.
I reached into my apron pocket and pulled out my phone.
“I would not leave,” I said.
Dale looked at the screen.
The call was already connected.
A man’s voice came through the speaker.
“Mrs. Ellis, are you safe?”
Dale’s face emptied.
Paula stared at me.
“Mom, who is that?”
“The police.”
Dale lunged for the phone.
Colleen shoved the table between us.
The roast slid from its platter and struck the floor.
The plate shattered.
The back door opened before Dale could reach me.
Two officers entered the kitchen.
One ordered Dale to put his hands where they could see them.
The other moved toward me.
Dale froze.
For the first time in four years, he had nothing to say.
The officer took the forged account papers, the statement and the documents from the table.
Then he asked Paula a question.
“Ma’am, do you recognize this signature?”
He pointed to the authorization page.
Paula looked down.
Her face went white.
I leaned closer.
At the bottom of the page were two signatures.
One was supposed to be mine.
The second belonged to a witness.
Paula Ellis Mercer.
My daughter’s name.
Written in my daughter’s handwriting.
The officer looked at her.
“Mrs. Mercer, did you sign this document?”
Paula’s eyes filled with tears.
Dale closed his eyes.
And Colleen whispered, “Oh, Paula.”
My daughter slowly lifted her head.
She did not look at the police officer.
She looked at me.
“Mom,” she said, “I can explain.”
Then Dale began to laugh.
Not nervously.
Not quietly.
He laughed like a man who had been waiting for this exact moment.
“You wanted the truth, Marguerite?” he said.
“Ask your daughter what she did with the first check.”………….
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3…
