Chapter 7: The Morning After Rosewood
I didn't sleep.
Lily slept in the back of Graham's car on the way to his attorney's office — Marcus had a conference room, a couch, a blanket that appeared without explanation.
She curled up without waking and didn't move again until seven in the morning.
I sat at the conference table with Graham and Marcus and a woman named Diane who was Marcus's associate and who arrived at two a.m.
with a laptop bag and no visible surprise at the situation.
We went through everything twice.
By four a.m., Diane had drafted a formal complaint to the state attorney's office and a civil recovery filing.
By five, Marcus had made two calls — one to a forensic documents examiner he described as the best in New England, one to a contact at the county recorder's office who owed him a favor.
At six-fifteen, the county recorder confirmed it.
The Westport property had been transferred out of my name eleven days after my divorce was finalized.
It had been sold four months later.
The sale price was listed in the public record.
I stared at the number on Diane's screen.
"That was my grandmother's house," I said.
"Yes," Diane said.
"She saved for forty years to pay it off."
"I know." Diane's voice was quiet.
"I'm sorry."
Graham was at the window.
He had been standing there for a while, coffee in hand, watching the city come awake.
"The sale price," he said without turning around.
"That's approximately what Vanessa told me she had in savings when we started talking about buying a place together."
"Yes," Marcus said.
"She used Claire's house to buy her way into my life."
Nobody answered that.
He turned from the window.
"What do we need from me?"
"Access to the joint account records," Marcus said.
"And anything you have that connects your father to Vanessa before your relationship began."
"I have emails.
He copied me on some of the early communications — he was playing matchmaker, or so I thought.
I have texts." Graham set down his coffee.
"I'll send everything to Diane."
"There's one more thing." Marcus looked at me.
"Vanessa's attorney will move quickly once she understands the scope of what we have.
She will likely try to negotiate a private settlement before this reaches the criminal stage.
She will offer money.
She will offer silence.
She may offer to return the value of the property."
"And?"
"You don't have to accept.
But you need to decide, before she makes that offer, what you actually want."
I looked at the conference table.
At the scanned document with my forged signature on page twelve.
At the photographs of Vanessa and Daniel outside the law office, both of them smiling.
"I want the house back," I said.
"Or what it was worth.
Every cent."
"That's recoverable," Marcus said.
"And I want it on record.
I don't want a private settlement that disappears.
I want there to be a record that this happened."
Marcus nodded slowly.
"That changes the negotiation."
"I know."
"Vanessa will fight harder."
"I know that too."
He looked at me for a moment.
Then he wrote something in his folio and said: "All right."
At seven-ten, Lily appeared in the doorway of the conference room in her yellow cardigan, her hair loose, her white purse still in her hand.
She looked at me.
Then at Graham.
Then at the papers covering the table.
"Did you fix it?" she asked.
"We're working on it," I said.
She considered this.
"Okay." She came and sat beside me.
"I'm hungry."
Graham picked up his phone.
"I'll find somewhere open."
"Can we get pancakes?"
"Absolutely," he said.
Lily nodded, satisfied, and leaned her head against my arm.
I put my hand over hers.
Outside, the sun was fully up now.
The city was moving.
Somewhere across town, Vanessa was awake in whatever hotel she had gone to, and her phone was ringing, and the decisions she had made over the past two years were beginning to land.
Marcus's phone buzzed on the table.
He looked at the screen.
"The documents examiner can see us at nine," he said.
"And Claire—" He paused.
"My contact at the county recorder's office found something else.
A third document.
Filed under a slightly different name variant — your middle name used as a first name."
I went still.
"What kind of document?"
Marcus looked at me carefully.
"A second property," he said.
"Also in Westport.
Also transferred.
Also sold."
I didn't understand for a moment.
Then I did.
"My grandmother owned two houses," I said.
"The main house and the cottage on the back of the lot.
She left them both to me."
May you like
Marcus set his phone down.
"Then we have more to recover than we thought," he said.
