Chapter 7: What Sophie Found in the Office
Sophie met me at Tom's house the following morning.
She still had the key Emma had given her.
Tom knew we were coming — Emma had called him the night before and he'd agreed, his voice thin and tired over the phone, that it was time to stop pretending everything was manageable.
Kristen was not there.
Tom had asked her to visit her sister for the day.
He hadn't told her why.
He'd been careful about that.
He opened the door before we knocked.
He looked like a man who hadn't slept in several nights.
The kind of tired that sits behind the eyes and doesn't shift with coffee or a shower.
He stepped back to let us in without saying anything.
"She doesn't know you're here?" Sophie asked.
"No," he said.
"Does she check the security cameras?"
He stopped walking.
Turned around slowly.
"There are cameras?" Sophie said.
"She had them installed in January," Tom said.
"She said it was for the insurance discount."
Sophie and I looked at each other.
"Where are they?" I said.
"Front door.
Back door.
The kitchen." He paused.
"Not the office."
"Then that's where we go," I said.
The office was a small room off the hallway, lined with the kind of flat-pack shelving Tom had always favored — practical, undecorated, purely functional.
His desk was clear except for a laptop and a charging cable.
The printer sat on the shelf to the right.
And beside the printer, a row of manila folders, standing upright in a wire rack.
Sophie went straight to them.
She pulled the first one and opened it on the desk.
Inside were printed bank statements — Tom's personal account, going back eighteen months.
She ran her finger down the columns.
"There are transfers," she said.
"Regular ones.
Every month."
Tom stood in the doorway.
"She said they were going into a joint investment account."
"What's the account number?"
He didn't know.
Sophie pulled out her phone and photographed every page.
Then the second folder — more statements, a different account, the same regular transfers.
Then a third folder, thicker than the others, which contained what appeared to be the original signed copies of the power of attorney documents, the amended will, and two other agreements Tom couldn't immediately identify.
"I've never seen those two," he said, pointing at the unfamiliar documents.
Sophie photographed everything.
The fourth folder held something different.
Printed emails, dozens of them, between an address Tom didn't recognize and what appeared to be a law firm.
The emails were dated across the past eight months.
Sophie read the first three and her face changed.
"Dad," she said quietly.
"Did you know Kristen has been in contact with a property attorney about the house?"
"She said she was handling the sale."
"She's not selling it." Sophie looked up.
"She's transferring it.
Into a trust.
In her son's name."
Tom sat down on the edge of the desk chair like the floor had shifted under him.
"The house would be out of your name entirely," Sophie said.
"Once the transfer completes, you'd have no legal claim to it."
"When does it complete?" I said.
Sophie checked the most recent email.
Her jaw tightened.
"Eleven days," she said.
Tom put his face in his hands.
I looked at the folders spread across the desk.
Eighteen months of quiet, methodical work.
A woman who had come into a man's life and spent over a year carefully dismantling everything he owned, one signed document at a time, while he stood in the kitchen making dinner and believing he was loved.
"Tom," I said.
"Look at me."
He lifted his face.
"Daniel's uncle.
Today.
Not tomorrow."
"Patricia—"
"Today," I said.
"Sophie is going to photograph everything in this room.
You are going to walk out of here with copies of all of it.
And then you are going to sit in front of a lawyer and you are going to tell him everything, including the parts that make you look foolish, because right now looking foolish is the least of your problems."
He nodded.
A small, defeated movement.
Sophie was still photographing.
She opened the desk drawer to check for anything else and stopped.
"Dad," she said.
"What's this?"
She held up a small voice recorder.
The kind with a red record light.
It was on.
We all stared at it.
"I didn't put that there," Tom said.
Sophie turned it over in her hand.
May you like
The recording had been running for — she checked the counter — four hours and seventeen minutes.
Someone had started it before we arrived.
