Chapter 5 - THE ROOM HE HAD ALREADY CHOSEN
The facility was six hours away.
That was the part I couldn't stop thinking about.
Not across town.
Not somewhere June could visit easily.
Six hours away.
Brightstone Ridge sat in a quiet rural area and advertised “discreet residential stabilization for high-functioning adults.”
Claire obtained the intake inquiry.
Gavin had asked:
Can admission be arranged quickly after delivery if the patient refuses?
My skin went cold.
The reply said involuntary admission required medical justification or court authority.
So Gavin had started building both.
The fake medical notes.
The competency petition.
The narrative that I was unstable.
He wasn't trying to take my house after a divorce.
He was trying to make sure I couldn't fight the divorce.
Or the property transfer.
Or custody.
The following afternoon, I received a voicemail from Gavin.
“Tess, please call me. This has gone too far.”
I almost deleted it.
Then he continued.
“Maren and I made mistakes, but you're misunderstanding the legal stuff. I was trying to protect you.”
Protect me.
Men like Gavin loved that word.
It made control sound generous.
I forwarded the recording to Claire.
That night, someone tried to enter my house through the side door.
The security system alerted me at 1:13 a.m.
June was sleeping in the guest room.
We watched the camera together.
A man in a baseball cap stood beneath the porch light.
He entered a code.
Wrong.
Entered another.
Wrong again.
Then he looked directly at the camera and walked away.
I didn't recognize him.
Police found nothing.
But Claire did.
The man was Graham Pike.
A private investigator Gavin had hired three months earlier.
To investigate me.
His report included photographs of me going to prenatal appointments, lunch with June, trips to the pharmacy, even one afternoon when I sat alone in a park.
The captions made ordinary things sound suspicious.
Subject appears emotionally distressed.
Subject meets unknown female privately.
Subject purchases medication.
The “unknown female” was my sister.
The medication was prenatal vitamins.
But that wasn't the strangest part.
Graham's invoice contained another surveillance target.
Maren.
I stared at the page.
“Why was Gavin investigating Maren?”
Claire leaned closer.
The surveillance began only four weeks earlier.
After Maren became pregnant.
The photographs showed her entering a medical office.
Not her obstetrician's clinic.
A reproductive endocrinology practice.
June frowned.
“Why would she go there at twelve weeks?”
Claire checked the name of the doctor.
Then looked at me.
“Tessa, Maren was a patient there before she became pregnant.”
“How long?”
“Almost a year.”
My confusion deepened.
Then Claire found the appointment record Gavin's investigator had photographed.
It wasn't a fertility-treatment appointment.
It was labeled:
May you like
DNA CONSULTATION.
Gavin had been investigating whether Maren's baby was actually his.
