Chapter 10 - MY MOTHER'S HOUSE
I had been inside my mother’s house.
I just hadn’t known it belonged to me.
Grandpa showed me a photograph.
A narrow brick house on a tree-lined street in Cincinnati.
Green shutters.
Small porch.
White railing.
I recognized it immediately.
“We went there when I was little.”
Grandpa nodded.
“Your mother grew up there.”
“I thought somebody else owned it.”
“Technically, a trust owned it.”
“My trust.”
“Yes.”
The house had been rented for years.
Income from it had quietly gone into the account.
Grandpa had protected it because Mom asked him to.
Dad knew about the house but thought Grandpa had sold it after Mom died.
“I didn’t want it,” Dad explained. “It felt like her family’s place.”
Miranda apparently discovered the truth when she searched old tax files.
The property was now worth nearly half a million dollars.
Combined with the trust, Miranda had been looking at an amount large enough to change lives.
Or destroy one.
“She was going to have me declared unable to manage it.”
“That appears to be the plan,” Alvarez said.
“And send me away.”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Grandpa finally did.
“Then she controls the story.”
That was Miranda’s real talent.
Stories.
I was difficult.
Grandpa was confused.
Dad was overwhelmed.
Miranda was helpful.
Dr. Wells was concerned.
Every lie supported another lie.
Until one bruise appeared beneath my sleeve beneath Grandpa’s kitchen light.
One mistake.
That was all it took.
Two days later, Miranda was arrested.
I thought I would feel powerful when I heard.
Instead, I threw up.
Grandpa held my hair away from my face.
“I hate that I’m scared.”
“Being scared doesn’t mean she’s winning.”
“What if she gets out?”
“Then we keep using doors, locks, laws, people, and common sense.”
I looked at him.
“You make protection sound boring.”
“The best protection usually is.”
I laughed for the first time in days.
Miranda’s attorney argued that everything had been misunderstood.
The bruises came from accidents.
The documents were estate planning.
The Phoenix facility was only an inquiry.
The altered medical notes were administrative mistakes.
Then investigators recovered my broken phone.
Technicians extracted deleted messages.
Not mine.
Miranda’s.
She had used my phone once to message Dr. Wells when hers was charging.
The conversation had synced briefly before she deleted it.
One message from Aaron read:
SHE'S ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TRUST.
Miranda replied:
THEN WE SPEED THIS UP.
Another:
DANIEL SUSPECT ANYTHING?
NO. HE THINKS SHE'S HAVING TEENAGE ISSUES.
Then came the message that made Grandpa leave the room.
Aaron:
WHAT IF ELIAS TAKES HER?
Miranda:
HE WON'T KNOW UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.
My hands started shaking.
There were dozens more.
But one message was different.
It was sent by Miranda to an unknown number.
NEED YOU TO CONFIRM ELIAS IS UNSAFE. SAME PRICE AS BEFORE.
The unknown number replied:
CASH ONLY.
Detective Alvarez traced the number.
The owner wasn’t a doctor.
Wasn’t a lawyer.
Wasn’t even someone we knew.
He was a private investigator.
And when police questioned him, he admitted Miranda had hired him to follow Grandpa.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
She had also paid him to create “incidents” that could make Grandpa appear confused or dangerous.
May you like
One of those incidents was scheduled for the following week.
And according to his written instructions, Grandpa was supposed to be arrested.
