Chapter 3 - THE POWER OF ATTORNEY I NEVER SIGNED
The document was dated fourteen months earlier.
Three months after Cora’s first birthday.
DURABLE FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY.
Principal:
Alora Mae Collins.
Agent:
Brenda Ruth Collins.
My stomach turned.
“I never signed this.”
Rachel examined the scanned copy.
“Signature looks like yours.”
“It isn’t.”
Ethan sat across from us in her office.
He had agreed to bring every file he could access.
That did not make him brave.
It made him late.
“Where did it come from?” Rachel asked.
Ethan swallowed.
“Mom had it prepared.”
“By whom?”
“Her attorney.”
“Were you present?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see Alora sign it?”
“No.”
“Then why did you believe it was valid?”
He looked at me.
“Because Mom said you signed it after Cora’s emergency-room visit.”
I remembered that visit.
Cora had a high fever.
I had been awake thirty hours.
Terrified.
Brenda came to the hospital.
So did Ethan.
Papers passed around for insurance.
Medical authorizations.
Childcare forms.
Had someone slipped something inside?
Maybe.
But I remembered signing only hospital documents.
Not a power of attorney.
The notary was:
Melissa Collins.
Ethan’s sister.
I laughed.
“Your sister notarized this?”
Ethan looked down.
Rachel’s expression hardened.
A notary is supposed to follow legal requirements, including properly identifying a signer and performing the required act in the signer’s presence.
If Melissa falsely notarized a signature, that was serious.
We did not assume.
We investigated.
Rachel obtained the account history where Brenda used the power of attorney.
My inheritance came from my grandmother.
Not millions.
But enough to matter.
A portfolio worth about $620,000 when I married Ethan.
I had barely touched it.
Current value should have been around $700,000 depending on markets and withdrawals.
Actual balance:
$391,000.
My throat tightened.
Transactions over fourteen months:
$42,000 to Collins Family Properties.
$18,000 to Brenda’s personal credit card.
$76,000 to Collins Wellness Group.
$55,000 marked “family loan.”
$31,500 for something called Cora Education Reserve.
That last one stopped me.
“Cora?”
We traced it.
There really was an account in Cora’s name.
But Brenda controlled it.
Not me.
Then another transfer.
$83,000.
Recipient:
Ethan Collins Consulting.
I stared at him.
“What is that?”
He looked pale.
“I put it back.”
“Answer.”
“I had business debt.”
“So you took eighty-three thousand dollars from my inheritance.”
“I borrowed it.”
“With permission from who?”
Silence.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the man who told me I was “too emotional about money” had apparently borrowed from me through a power of attorney I never signed.
“When did you repay it?”
“Six weeks later.”
Rachel checked.
He had returned $86,000.
Interest.
That did not fix authorization.
But it mattered.
“You knew your mother was moving my money.”
“Yes.”
“You never asked why she had power over it?”
“I thought you trusted her.”
I stared at him.
“Have you met your mother?”
Even Rachel almost smiled.
Then we found the most alarming transfer.
$95,000 to:
MARA HOLDINGS LLC.
Neither Ethan nor I recognized it.
Brenda’s phone records, later obtained through proper legal process, showed regular calls to someone named Mara Whitfield.
Who was Mara?
Ethan went still.
“You know.”
“No.”
“You reacted.”
He stood and walked toward the window.
“My father had another daughter.”
Silence.
“What?”
Before Howard married Brenda, he dated a woman named Sofia Whitfield.
She became pregnant.
The relationship ended.
Sofia gave birth to a daughter.
Mara.
Howard paid support privately for several years.
Then Brenda entered his life.
After Brenda and Howard married, Mara disappeared from family conversations.
“She died?” I asked.
“That’s what Mom said.”
“When?”
“When Mara was little.”
Rachel looked up.
“Then why is Brenda transferring ninety-five thousand dollars to a company with Mara’s name?”
Ethan’s face changed.
“I don’t know.”
I did not believe that he knew the answer.
But I believed he understood the implication.
Mara might be alive.
Then Rachel found another transaction.
Monthly.
$2,500.
For eight years.
Long before Brenda’s alleged power of attorney over me.
Paid from Collins Family Properties.
Recipient:
Mara Whitfield.
Mara had never been dead.
May you like
Someone had simply decided the family would live as though she were.
And Brenda—who spent years calling me defective, inferior, and unworthy of the Collins bloodline—had been quietly sending money to the daughter she pretended did not exist.
