Chapter 14 - MY MOTHER'S NAME
My mother had never heard of the storage facility.
She cried when I showed her the rental contract.
"I didn't sign anything."
"I know."
"Why would they put my name on it?"
I knew the answer.
"Because if police found the unit, they wanted someone close to me to confirm it could be mine."
My mother stared at me.
"Dererick asked me about storage last year."
My pulse jumped.
"What did he ask?"
"He said you were running out of room at the house. He asked whether you'd ever rented a unit near the office."
She covered her mouth.
"I told him you hated storage units because your father lost documents in one after a flood."
"When was this?"
"Around Christmas."
Eleven months ago.
The same month the fraudulent rental began.
My mother's face crumpled.
"I helped him."
"No."
"I answered his questions."
"You answered your son-in-law's questions."
For the first time, I understood how Dererick had built his case.
He rarely needed people to lie for him.
He only needed them to answer innocent questions.
What tea does Anna drink when she can't sleep?
Does she ever forget appointments?
Where does she keep documents?
Who has keys to the lake house?
Does she get anxious when she's overwhelmed?
Each answer became a piece of a machine nobody else could see.
My mother reached across the table and gripped my hand.
"I am sorry I didn't believe you."
The apology hurt more than anger would have.
"He called you first."
"That isn't an excuse."
"It's what he does."
She looked down.
"He made me afraid of you before I spoke to you."
That sentence captured everything.
Dererick did not need people to hate me.
He only needed them to fear what I might do.
Fear filled the gaps where facts had not arrived yet.
My mother insisted on seeing the fake storage unit for herself.
Ortiz refused at first.
Then she allowed her to view photographs after the scene had been processed.
My mother stared at the wall of images supposedly created by me.
"That's not how Anna writes."
Ortiz pointed to the notes.
"The handwriting examiner says the imitation is strong."
"I don't mean the handwriting."
My mother leaned closer.
"She doesn't use the word liar like that."
I looked at her.
"What?"
"When you're angry, you write full sentences."
Despite everything, I laughed.
"That's your evidence?"
"I'm your mother. I have thirty-six years of angry notes."
Ortiz almost smiled.
The observation sounded trivial, but it became useful.
The forged notes used short labels.
LIAR.
WATCHING ME.
SHE HAS TO STOP.
My real journals and work notes, even when emotional, tended to explain and qualify.
A forensic linguist later identified multiple differences in vocabulary and syntax.
It would never prove authorship by itself.
But it weakened the claim that the wall represented my private writing.
My mother also recognized one folder in the storage unit.
"That came from my house."
It was an old blue tax folder with my father's handwriting on the label.
She had given it to Dererick months earlier when he offered to help organize estate records.
That explained my fingerprint.
I had handled the folder years ago.
Dererick had later taken possession of it through my mother.
The evidence planted to connect me to the unit now created another chain back toward him.
"He asked for old paperwork specifically," my mother said.
"He said he wanted originals because scans sometimes missed handwritten notes."
Ortiz wrote that down.
I watched guilt move across my mother's face again.
"Stop," I said.
"What?"
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Taking responsibility for information he extracted under false reasons."
She looked at me.
"I should have known."
"How?"
"I don't know."
"Exactly."
For days, people had asked why I had not known my husband was drugging me.
Now my mother was asking why she had not known an ordinary paperwork request was part of a criminal conspiracy.
The question punished hindsight for being clearer than real time.
"We can regret what happened without pretending we were supposed to predict it," I said.
My mother cried then.
So did I.
It was the first conversation we had had since the case began that belonged entirely to us rather than to Dererick's narrative.
My mother's name on the rental contract frightened her because it made the conspiracy feel physical.
Until then, she could still imagine Dererick's lies as words exchanged over phones and tables.
Now her name had been printed on a document she never signed and attached to a room full of planted evidence.
She touched the photocopy with one finger.
"He was willing to make me part of it."
I nodded.
That was the moment she stopped thinking of him as a confused husband and started seeing him as a threat.
My mother also remembered that Dererick often volunteered to drive her home after family dinners.
She had considered it evidence of how thoughtful he was.
Now she realized those drives gave him private time to ask about me without me present.
"He'd say you were stressed and ask what you were like after your father died," she said.
"I thought he was trying to understand you."
"He was."
She looked hurt by my answer.
"Just not for the reason you thought."
He had asked about my childhood sleep habits.
Whether I ever walked in my sleep.
Whether I had nightmares after my father died.
Whether anyone in our family had addiction problems.
My mother had answered no to most of it.
When the truth did not fit the narrative, Dererick simply stopped asking that branch of questions.
That detail mattered.
He was not neutrally gathering history.
He was searching for facts that could support a predetermined conclusion.
If the answer did not help, it disappeared.
My mother began writing down her memories chronologically.
By the end, she had seventeen separate conversations in which Dererick subtly asked about my mental state, finances, estate, routines, or family history.
Any one conversation looked harmless.
Together, they looked like an interview conducted over a year without the subject knowing an interview was happening.
Detective Ortiz asked my mother to reconstruct every conversation she had had with Dererick in the last year.
Most were ordinary.
Birthday plans.
Holiday dinners.
Questions about my father.
Then one call stood out.
Three months earlier, Dererick had asked whether my father ever experienced depression.
"What did you say?"
Ortiz asked.
"I said no."
"Did he explain why he was asking?"
"He said Anna had been having dark moods and he wondered if it ran in the family."
I stared at the table.
He had been planting a family history that did not exist.
My mother continued.
"Then he asked whether Anna ever talked about feeling like a burden after her father died."
I felt sick.
The fake note at the lake house used those exact words.
I don't want to be a burden anymore.
"What did you tell him?"
"I said you once told me you felt guilty because the company needed you when you were grieving."
My mother began crying again.
"He turned that into the note."
Ortiz's expression tightened.
"Possibly."
My mother looked at her.
"Not possibly. He did."
The certainty in her voice surprised me.
Dererick had lost her.
He did not know it yet.
That gave us an opportunity.
The next morning, he called her from the detention center.
All inmate calls were recorded, but he knew that.
He stayed careful.
"Margaret, I'm so worried about her."
My mother sat in Ortiz's office with the phone on speaker.
"I am too."
She sounded frightened.
It was not difficult for her.
"The police are telling me awful things."
"They don't understand Anna."
"Do you?"
A pause.
"Better than anyone."
I closed my eyes.
Even now, he believed that.
My mother continued.
"They showed me the storage unit."
Dererick was silent.
"Storage unit?"
"The one in Anna's name."
"I don't know anything about that."
Perfect answer.
"They found Meredith's phone."
Another pause.
"Oh God."
His concern sounded real.
"Margaret, you have to tell police Anna has been unstable."
My mother looked at me.
"Why?"
"Because she needs help."
"What if they're right about you?"
Silence.
Longer this time.
"Who is putting that in your head?"
There it was.
The softness vanished.
My mother hesitated deliberately.
"Nobody."
"Margaret."
His voice became low.
"Do not let them turn you against your daughter by turning you against me."
The manipulation was almost elegant.
My mother let her voice shake.
"I don't know what to believe."
Dererick softened again.
"Believe what you've seen."
"I've seen Anna scared."
"Exactly."
"I've seen her drug test."
Silence.
I wanted to grab the phone.
Ortiz shook her head.
My mother continued.
"They found something in her blood."
Dererick breathed out slowly.
"Anna has access to medication."
My fists clenched.
"What medication?"
"I don't know."
"Then why say that?"
His tone sharpened.
"Because we need the incapacity finding before the transfer window closes."
The room went still.
Dererick stopped.
He had said too much.
My mother did not react.
"What transfer window?"
"I misspoke."
"Dererick?"
"I mean the company review."
His breathing changed.
"Margaret, who is in the room with you?"
My mother looked at Ortiz.
"Nobody."
"Put Anna on."
My heart stopped.
"She's not here."
"Put her on."
The softness was gone now.
"I know she's there."
My mother stared at the phone.
"How?"
Dererick laughed once.
Not kindly.
"Because Anna always goes quiet when she's afraid."
The line disconnected.
He had exposed himself.
But he had also reminded me how well he knew me.
Two hours later, the detention hearing was continued while prosecutors added the recorded statement to their filing.
Dererick remained in custody.
That afternoon, my mother received a package at her house.
Inside was a framed photograph of me as a child standing beside my father at the lake.
The glass had been removed.
Behind the photograph was a small electronic device.
Ortiz's technician examined it.
It was a tracker.
Someone had mailed it before Dererick was detained.
Someone still wanted to know where my mother went.
May you like
And beneath the tracker was a handwritten note.
MARGARET IS NEXT IF ANNA DOESN'T STOP.
