Chapter 7: The Document
William's lawyer arrived at ten o'clock.
Her name was Patricia Holt — sixty years old, silver-haired, with the unhurried manner of someone who had seen every version of this situation before and found none of them surprising.
She set her briefcase on the dining room table, opened it, and placed a single printed page in front of William.
"This is what Isabella's sister sent over," Patricia said.
"She emailed it forty minutes ago."
William looked at it.
Emma stood near the doorway, close enough to see but not close enough to read.
"What is it?" she asked.
William didn't answer immediately.
He read the page twice.
Then he set it down and pushed it toward Patricia.
"Is it real?" he asked.
"I don't know yet.
That's what we need to find out." Patricia picked it up.
"It appears to be a letter.
Handwritten.
Signed with your late wife's name."
Emma came closer.
The letter was written on cream-colored stationery in a careful, slanted hand.
It was dated fourteen months before Catherine Sterling had died.
The content was brief — seven sentences — and it described, in plain language, a plan to separate from William, to take Ethan, and to begin a new life somewhere outside New York.
"Did you know about this?" Patricia asked.
"No," William said.
"Was there any period of serious difficulty in your marriage around that time?"
William was quiet for a moment.
"We had a hard year.
Catherine was sick.
The diagnosis had just come back.
She was frightened, and I was—" He stopped.
"I was not as present as I should have been.
But she never said anything about leaving."
"People don't always say it," Patricia said.
Not unkindly.
"She wouldn't have taken Ethan," William said.
"Whatever was happening between us, she would not have taken him from me."
"I believe you," Patricia said.
"But that's not the question.
The question is whether this letter is authentic, and if it is, what Isabella intended to do with it."
"She was going to use it to make me look like a bad husband," William said.
"To make Catherine look like she was running from me.
To make everything I've said about my marriage look like a lie." He looked at the letter.
"If that comes out while she's facing criminal charges, it shifts the story.
Suddenly I'm not the grieving father protecting his son.
I'm the controlling husband whose wife was trying to escape him."
"That's the strategy," Patricia said.
"Yes."
Emma looked at the letter.
"Can you verify the handwriting?"
"We can try.
We'd need samples of Catherine's writing from the same period." Patricia looked at William.
"Do you have anything?
Cards, notes, anything handwritten?"
"Upstairs.
In my office." He stood.
"Give me ten minutes."
He left the room.
Patricia began making notes.
Emma looked at the letter again — at the careful, slanted handwriting, at the date, at the signature.
Something about it was wrong.
She couldn't name it yet.
"Mrs.
Holt," Emma said.
"Can I ask — how did Isabella get this?
If it's real, how did she have it?"
Patricia looked up.
"That's the right question."
"Catherine's things were here.
In this house.
After she died." Emma thought back.
"Isabella moved in six weeks after the wedding.
She had access to everything."
"Including any personal papers Catherine left behind."
"Yes."
Patricia wrote something down.
"If Isabella found this letter in Catherine's belongings and kept it — that's one thing.
If she had it fabricated — that's another thing entirely." She capped her pen.
"Either way, she's been holding it as leverage.
Which tells us she always expected to need it."
"She planned for every possibility," Emma said quietly.
"She said so herself."
Patricia looked at her.
"You heard her say that?"
"Last night.
In front of Detective Reyes and several witnesses."
Patricia wrote that down too.
William came back into the room with a small wooden box.
He set it on the table and lifted the lid.
Inside were birthday cards, folded notes, a few postcards.
He spread them out carefully, the way a person handles things they don't touch often.
Patricia picked up a birthday card and held it beside the letter.
She looked at them for a long time.
"The slant is different," she said.
"The letter curves left.
Catherine's natural hand curves right.
It's subtle, but it's consistent across all of these." She set the card down.
"This will need a professional examiner.
But my initial read is that this letter was not written by your wife."
William sat down slowly.
"She forged it," he said.
"That would be my working assumption." Patricia began gathering the documents.
"Which means we now have evidence of a second crjme.
Forgery.
Potentially fraud, depending on how she intended to use it." She closed her briefcase.
"I'm going to call Detective Reyes."
William nodded.
He was looking at the birthday card — the one Catherine had written.
Emma could see the cover from where she stood.
A simple card.
A hand-drawn sun in the corner.
A child's sticker of a star pressed crookedly beside it.
Ethan must have helped decorate it.
"She touched Catherine's things," William said.
Not to Patricia.
Not really to anyone.
Emma didn't say anything.
"She went through everything Catherine left behind and she used it." He looked up.
"She sat in this house and planned how to use a dead woman's memory against her own family."
Patricia paused at the doorway.
"Mr.
Sterling.
I need you to hear me clearly.
This is now stronger for us, not weaker.
Every additional crjme she committed is another charge.
Every piece of leverage she tried to hold over you becomes evidence against her." She held his gaze.
"Let me make the call."
He nodded.
Patricia left the room.
William looked at the birthday card for another moment.
Then he placed it carefully back in the box and closed the lid.
His phone buzzed on the table.
He turned it over.
A text from an unknown number.
May you like
Four words.
*Drop it or else.*
