Chapter 8: Lauren Fights Back
The solicitor Richard recommended was a woman named Patricia Osei.
She had a calm, unhurried voice on the phone and a way of asking questions that made the answers feel inevitable.
By the end of the call, she had a complete picture of the property title, the second mortgage, the listing, the authorization letter, and the Crestfield company structure.
"The title is clean," she told David's mother.
"The second mortgage is registered correctly and does not affect your ownership.
No one can act on a sale without your signed consent.
The accepted offer is unenforceable.
The buyers' solicitors will be informed today."
"What about Lauren?"
"That proceeds separately through the crjminal process.
My job is to protect the property.
Officer Carver's job is the rest." A pause.
"Has Lauren attempted to contact you directly?"
"Not yet."
"If she does, do not engage.
Refer everything to me."
Lauren contacted her three hours later.
Not by phone.
By appearing at the front door.
David's mother saw her through the hallway window before she rang the bell.
Lauren was dressed carefully — not the way she had been dressed the night before, in the clothes she had worn to the family gathering, but in something more deliberate.
Composed.
She had her bag over one shoulder and her keys in her hand and she looked like someone who had decided, overnight, on a strategy.
The bell rang.
David's mother did not open the door.
She called Patricia Osei.
"She's here," she said.
"Do not open the door," Patricia said immediately.
"Do not speak to her through the door.
If she does not leave in five minutes, call Officer Carver."
She watched through the window.
Lauren rang the bell again.
Then she stepped back and looked up at the front of the house — at the windows, the facade, the garden.
The look was not sentimental.
It was assessing.
Then Lauren took out her phone and called David.
David's mother could not hear the conversation.
But she could see Lauren's face as it progressed, and she watched the composure shift — first to something harder, then to something that looked, briefly, like desperation.
David appeared in the hallway two minutes later.
He had been upstairs on the call.
"She wants to come in," he said.
"She says there are things she needs to collect.
Personal items."
"Patricia said—"
"I know what Patricia said." He looked through the window at his wife standing in the front garden.
"She's going to say that refusing her access to personal belongings looks punitive.
She'll use it."
"Let her use it." His mother's voice was steady.
"Patricia said do not open the door."
David looked at her.
Then he looked back at Lauren.
Lauren had seen him in the window.
She spread her hands — a gesture that said: I just want to talk.
I just want five minutes.
We can fix this.
David stepped back from the window.
He called Lauren back.
She picked up on the first ring.
"I'm not opening the door," he said.
"Make a list of anything you need.
I'll have it couriered to your mother's address." A pause.
"Don't come back here without telling me first.
And don't contact my mother directly.
If you need to reach her, go through Patricia Osei."
A silence on the line.
Then Lauren's voice, stripped now of everything except the cold core of it.
"You're making a mistake, David.
There are things about this family — about your mother — that you don't know.
Things I found out when I was trying to help.
If this goes to court, all of it comes out."
"Then it comes out," he said.
"I'm warning you—"
"Lauren." He stopped her.
"I watched you sl\*p my mother in front of thirty-two people.
I watched you try to delete evidence in front of witnesses.
I watched you tell a room full of family that you had forged her name and then try to make her the problem." He paused.
"Whatever you found, whatever you think you have — it doesn't change what you did.
And it doesn't change what I saw."
The line was quiet.
"Goodbye, Lauren," he said.
He ended the call.
Through the window, they watched her stand in the garden for a moment longer.
Then she turned and walked to her car.
She did not look back at the house.
But before she got in, she stopped.
She looked up one more time — not at the windows, not at David, but at the house itself.
At the roofline.
At the front door.
At the garden wall.
The look on her face was not grief.
It was not regret.
It was the look of someone revising a plan.
David saw it too.
"She's not done," he said quietly.
May you like
"No," his mother agreed.
"But neither are we."
