Chapter 10 - SOMEONE HAD BEEN WATCHING MY WIFE
My grief became anger so quickly it almost frightened me.
“Who?”
Madison shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Frank finally spoke.
“This is getting absurd.”
I stepped toward him.
For the first time that night, he stepped backward.
“Who?”
“Thomas, calm down.”
“Do not use my wife’s name, her illness, or my grief as leverage and then tell me to calm down.”
Eric moved beside me.
Not in front.
Beside.
That mattered.
Madison explained that Frank had known about Eleanor’s cancer recurrence months before she told the family.
Eleanor wanted privacy.
She had asked her doctor to wait until additional testing confirmed the prognosis.
Someone leaked appointment information.
Not full records.
Enough to tell Frank that she was seriously ill.
He adjusted his timeline.
The forged will.
The loan.
The pressure on Eric.
The plan to isolate me.
My wife’s death had become a business deadline.
Samuel called our attorney.
Then the clinic.
Then law enforcement.
Frank laughed bitterly.
“You think you can prove any of that?”
“No,” I said.
“Not yet.”
That answer bothered him.
Good.
I had learned long ago not to threaten people with outcomes I had not earned.
Then Eric asked Madison a question.
“Did you know Mom was sick before we did?”
She looked devastated.
“No.”
“Did Frank?”
“Yes.”
“And you kept working with him after you learned that?”
She closed her eyes.
“For two weeks.”
Eric stepped away.
Two weeks.
Sometimes marriage dies in a number.
Not because two weeks is long.
Because it is long enough to choose differently fourteen times.
Madison whispered, “I was scared.”
Eric replied, “So was Mom.”
Nothing else needed saying.
Samuel returned from the hallway.
“The title filing is temporarily frozen.”
Relief.
Then his expression tightened again.
“But there’s another issue.”
“What now?”
“The ranch appraisal.”
“What about it?”
“The thirty-one million figure is outdated.”
Madison actually laughed weakly.
“What, it’s worth less?”
Samuel looked at me.
“No.”
He opened a new report.
A water-management company had completed a confidential regional valuation three months earlier.
Because of the aquifer access and development restrictions surrounding the Hale River property, the ranch’s estimated strategic value was not thirty-one million.
It was closer to seventy-four.
May you like
Frank had not been trying to steal a ranch.
He had been trying to steal control of a future worth more than any of us realized.
