Chapter 8 - THE SISTER WHO SIGNED
Elaine arrived at the police station forty minutes later.
She walked into the interview room looking furious.
Audrey stood immediately.
“Did you sign it?”
Elaine stopped.
“Sign what?”
Nathan slid the guardianship petition across the table.
Elaine read the first page.
Then the second.
Her face drained.
“That isn’t mine.”
“Your name is there.”
“My name is there. My signature isn’t.”
Audrey watched her carefully.
Elaine reached the psychiatric evaluation.
Her anger disappeared.
She looked frightened.
“Where did they get this?”
“What?”
“These phrases.”
She pointed at the page.
“‘Rigid coping style.’ ‘Hypervigilance around financial control.’ ‘Difficulty delegating under stress.’”
Audrey frowned.
“What about them?”
“I wrote them.”
The room went still.
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
Audrey felt betrayed all over again.
Elaine quickly continued.
“It wasn’t a clinical evaluation.”
“Then what was it?”
“Mom asked me for advice.”
Helena.
Again.
“About?”
“You were working eighteen-hour days during the Vance Capital restructuring. Mom thought you were burning out.”
“So you analyzed me?”
“I wrote her an email saying you needed sleep and boundaries, not treatment.”
Nathan tapped the forged petition.
“Somebody converted your informal observations into a psychiatric diagnosis.”
Elaine sat down.
“I never authorized this.”
“Who had the email?”
“Mom.”
Audrey closed her eyes.
And possibly Charles.
Helena had opened the family archives.
Helena had preserved information about Audrey’s stress.
Helena had welcomed Charles back.
Maybe her mother had been manipulated.
Maybe not.
At this point, Audrey cared less about motive than access.
“What else did Mom ask you?”
Elaine hesitated.
“Before Maisie was born?”
“Yes.”
“She asked about postpartum psychosis.”
Audrey stared.
“When?”
“Two months ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought she was worried about family history.”
“What family history?”
Elaine’s expression changed.
A tiny delay.
Audrey caught it.
“What family history?”
Elaine looked toward Nathan.
Then back at Audrey.
“Grandma Evelyn.”
Their grandmother had died when Audrey was seven.
Audrey remembered perfume, pearl earrings, and a soft southern accent.
Nothing about psychiatric illness.
“What about her?”
“She was hospitalized after Mom was born.”
“For postpartum depression?”
Elaine swallowed.
“That’s what we were told.”
Audrey hated that phrase.
What we were told.
Nothing in her family seemed to be what she had been told.
Elaine lowered her voice.
“There was a second hospitalization.”
“When?”
“Six years later.”
“Why?”
“No one knows.”
“Someone knows.”
Elaine didn’t answer.
Audrey’s phone vibrated.
Sienna.
She had sent a photograph.
A document she apparently found inside Derek’s abandoned suitcase.
Audrey opened it.
Old paper.
Vance Family Trust.
Dated thirty-five years earlier.
Long before Audrey married Derek.
Long before Maisie.
Nathan enlarged the photograph.
“This isn’t in the current trust archive.”
“What is it?”
“An amendment.”
They read.
If direct voting control passes to a female descendant deemed medically incapable, temporary authority may revert to the nearest competent adult male descendant of founder Edward Vance.
Audrey’s skin went cold.
Charles.
Her grandfather had written a clause that could return everything to his son.
All Charles needed was for Audrey to be declared incapable.
The baby had complicated the plan.
Custody gave them leverage over Maisie.
Guardianship removed Audrey.
Together, they created control.
Nathan looked at the date.
“Why isn’t this amendment in our records?”
Elaine whispered:
“Maybe Grandpa revoked it.”
Audrey’s phone rang.
Sienna.
Audrey answered.
“I found more.”
“Where?”
“In Derek’s suitcase.”
“What?”
“A letter from Charles.”
Sienna’s voice shook.
“He promised Derek ten million dollars.”
Audrey closed her eyes.
Of course.
“For what?”
“To stay married to you until Maisie was born.”
Audrey stopped breathing.
“What did you say?”
Sienna began crying.
“He was never supposed to divorce you before the baby.”
Everything inside Audrey went silent.
Six years of marriage.
Pregnancy.
The nursery.
Derek touching her stomach.
Derek arguing about baby names.
How far back did this go?
“Sienna.”
“Yes?”
“Read me the date on the letter.”
Paper moved.
Then Sienna whispered:
“Seven years ago.”
May you like
Audrey’s stomach dropped.
A year before Audrey and Derek had even met.
