Chapter 6: Sorry Is Not a Document
Teresa called my cell phone at 8 p.m.
that night.
I was sitting in the hospital room with Frederick asleep in the bed and Amy reading in the chair beside him.
I looked at the screen.
I let it ring four times.
Then I stepped into the hallway and answered.
"Connor." Her voice was soft.
Controlled.
The voice she used when she needed something.
"Baby, I need you to listen to me."
"I'm listening," I said.
"What happened last night — it got out of hand.
I never meant for any of it to go that far.
I was trying to protect you.
That's all I've ever tried to do."
"You forged a signature on the deed to my house."
"I was afraid Amy would leave and take everything.
I've seen it happen.
I've seen women do that to good men and I couldn't let it happen to my son."
"Amy has never threatened to leave."
"Not to your face."
I looked down the hallway.
A nurse was pushing a cart toward the far end of the corridor.
The wheels made a small sound on the linoleum.
"Teresa," I said.
"I know about the Clarksville property.
I know about the three letters.
I know about Daniel."
Silence.
Not a long silence.
Two seconds, maybe three.
But it was a different kind of silence than anything that had come before it.
"Daniel has been filling your head with lies," she said.
Her voice had changed.
The softness was gone.
"He tried to get money from your father for years.
He's a troubled man, Connor.
He's not someone you should be talking to."
"He's my father's brother.
He's my uncle."
"He is nothing to you.
He was nothing to Robert either, until he came sniffing around when Robert got sick."
"That's not what the estate documents say."
"Estate documents can be wrong."
"The forged notary stamp on your transfer claim says something different," I said.
"The DA's office has it now."
Another silence.
Longer this time.
When she spoke again, her voice had dropped to something I'd never heard from her before.
Flat.
Stripped of performance.
"Connor, if you push this, it will destroy this family.
Everything I did, I did for you.
You were always the one I was protecting.
Not Mason, not Betsy — you.
And this is how you repay me?"
"You put Amy on a stool in a corner of her own kitchen and made her scrub dishes while she held a sick baby," I said.
"You intercepted legal mail addressed to me for over a year.
You forged documents to steal my house and my father's property.
And you hid the fact that I have family I never knew about." I stopped.
"Tell me which part of that was for me."
She didn't answer.
"I want you to stop calling," I said.
"Don't call Amy.
Don't contact Frederick's doctors.
Don't send Betsy or anyone else.
If you need to communicate with me, do it through a lawyer."
"Connor—"
"I mean it, Teresa."
I ended the call.
I stood in the hallway for a moment.
My heart was going fast but my hands were steady.
I looked at them to check.
Steady.
I went back into the room.
Amy looked up from her book.
"She called," Amy said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"What did she say?"
"That she was protecting me." I sat down in the chair on the other side of Frederick's bed.
"That Daniel is a liar.
That if I push this, it destroys the family."
Amy was quiet.
"Do you believe her?" she asked.
"About Daniel?"
"No," I said.
"Not for a second."
Amy nodded slowly.
She looked at Frederick.
He was sleeping on his side, one arm stretched out toward the edge of the mattress.
"I should have shown you those letters the day I found them," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"You should have."
She looked at me.
"But I understand why you didn't," I said.
"And we're going to talk about that.
Properly.
When this is over."
She held my gaze for a moment.
Then she looked back at Frederick.
"Okay," she said.
We sat on opposite sides of our son's hospital bed, not speaking, while the monitors beeped steadily and the hallway outside stayed quiet.
I didn't know yet that Mason had made a deal with the DA's office that afternoon.
May you like
I didn't know what he'd told them.
I didn't know that what he'd said had changed the scope of the investigation entirely — and that Teresa's attorney was already preparing for something much worse than a forgery charge.
