Chapter 9 - THE MISSING PAGE
I knew my father's handwriting better than I knew my mother's laughter.
He had written birthday notes in a slanted hand and signed every card with an elaborate W.
The first page of his letter was unquestionably his.
But the missing second page mattered more than the first.
Agnes remembered photographing both sides of the letter while preparing an estate inventory.
She searched an old email account and found only the first image.
The second had been removed from the archive at some point.
Rachel proposed obtaining the original through a carefully framed discovery request.
Instead, Margaret sent word that she would meet me alone and show me the letter if I restored the refinancing offer.
"No," Jonathan said immediately.
"She's bargaining with your grief."
He was right.
I answered through counsel, offering a neutral document exchange.
Margaret refused.
That afternoon a newspaper published allegations about my business, naming anonymous sources familiar with family finances.
Its headline implied I had engineered the foreclosure.
Rachel prepared a factual correction emphasizing that the estate's obligations predated my decision to stop voluntary support.
I asked her not to mention Emma in the response.
The article had already turned a hurt child into an accessory to a property dispute.
At dinner Jonathan placed a small plate of pasta before me.
"You haven't eaten properly."
"Neither have you."
"I stole two crackers from Emma."
I laughed despite myself.
Then my phone rang.
It was Margaret's oldest friend, Vivian Hale.
She had attended Easter dinner.
"Caroline, I've been a coward," she said.
I waited.
"I saw your mother seize that child. I heard her head hit the floor. And I let Lauren tell everyone it was a misunderstanding."
Vivian agreed to speak to Detective Torres.
She also revealed why Margaret had been so desperate for the additional money.
A private dinner with prospective buyers was scheduled for Wednesday.
The lender's looming deadline could make a distress-sale arrangement attractive to the family.
"They need your money," Vivian said.
"Not to save the house. To buy time long enough to make their own deal."
After the call Rachel emailed me a newly discovered attachment.
It contained the second page of my father's letter.
At the bottom was a sentence underlined three times.
May you like
"If Charles tells you I authorized the Caldwell transfer, he is lying."
