Chapter 12 - The Table My Husband Restored
I stared at the empty space for a long time.
Then Arthur cursed.
Not loudly.
He almost never cursed.
That scared me more.
“How did she get in?”
Michael checked the cameras.
Sarah hadn’t.
A delivery van had pulled into my driveway at 3:17.
Two men carried the oak table out.
They had paperwork.
A pickup authorization.
Signed by me.
Another forgery.
The men had believed they were moving furniture.
Sarah had arranged everything remotely.
That table was not worth millions.
Maybe two thousand dollars.
But she knew its real value.
My husband had spent weeks restoring it.
David learned to sand wood beside him.
Our first family Christmas photographs sat on it.
Sarah had selected the one object that could still make me act emotionally.
And she wanted David alone.
That told me the table was bait.
David agreed.
“I’m not going.”
I looked at him.
“Neither am I.”
We contacted the moving company.
The driver remembered the delivery address.
Not the motel.
A self-storage facility near the interstate.
Arthur, David and I drove there the next morning with documentation proving ownership.
The manager was cooperative.
Unit 318 had been rented under Sarah’s name.
Inside sat my console table.
Untouched.
I nearly cried when I saw it.
Arthur ran his hand across the wood.
“Warren built this thing like a tank.”
Then David noticed boxes behind it.
Sarah’s boxes.
Apparently she had been using the unit for months.
We did not open anything without legal advice.
Elaine obtained permission from Sarah’s attorney for David to retrieve marital property clearly identified as his while preserving disputed materials.
The inventory revealed something enormous.
Copies of forged documents.
Prepaid phones.
Printed emails.
Medical brochures.
Property valuations.
And photographs of several houses.
Not just mine.
Emily’s.
Brandon’s mother’s.
An elderly former client Sarah had once worked for.
Elaine stared at the images.
“This may not have started with you.”
My skin crawled.
Sarah had researched older homeowners with valuable property.
Maybe she never acted on the others.
Maybe she had simply been learning.
But one folder was labeled TEST CASE.
Inside was information about a widow named Carol Jennings.
Seventy-one.
No children.
Property valued at $780,000.
Sarah had worked for Carol as a freelance organizer two years earlier.
I recognized the name.
She had died the previous summer.
David whispered, “How?”
Elaine checked public records.
Carol had sold her home six months before she died.
Buyer?
BHS Property Solutions.
Brandon’s company.
The sale price was shockingly low.
Almost forty percent beneath estimated market value.
Then Elaine found a court filing.
Carol’s niece had challenged the sale, alleging that Carol had been mentally impaired.
The case was dismissed because the niece lacked funds to continue.
David looked at Brandon’s name.
Then at Sarah’s.
“This wasn’t her first time.”
Elaine nodded grimly.
“No.”
Arthur found a photograph clipped inside the folder.
Sarah stood beside Carol Jennings.
Smiling.
Helping her sign something.
But another person stood in the background.
May you like
Dr. Philip Moran.
The same doctor Sarah had chosen for me.
