Chapter 12 - THE LIFE INSURANCE TRAP
I had never purchased an insurance policy on Rebecca.
I had never seen one.
Nevertheless, someone had filed documents listing me as a beneficiary and forged my signature.
The investigator showed us copies of the application.
The handwriting imitated mine well enough to fool somebody who didn't know me.
The account associated with the supposed payout had been opened under an identity connected to my old apartment.
“I was working twelve-hour shifts and changing diapers,” I said.
“I wasn't collecting insurance money.”
Marisol believed the paperwork had been designed to make me an easy scapegoat if the scheme collapsed.
She warned us that documents alone could not establish who had forged them.
Arthur's representatives responded by claiming the entire affair was the product of a family feud.
Then a local television station aired an interview with Judith.
My mother sat beneath the same wedding portrait and called me “a troubled woman with a lifelong taste for attention.”
I stared in disbelief as she suggested I had benefited financially from the girls' care.
Emma turned off the screen.
“Why would Grandma do this?”
“Because she's afraid,” Lily said.
“Of Arthur?”
“Maybe of the truth about herself.”
That afternoon an older man called Marisol's office.
He identified himself as the retired notary whose seal appeared on Daniel's disputed relinquishment forms.
He wanted to correct his records.
He said he had never met Daniel on the stated signing date.
“Then who was in the room?” Marisol asked over speakerphone.
The man exhaled.
“A woman said she was acting for the family.”
“Which woman?”
“Judith Carter.”
The room fell silent.
Then the notary added, “And there was another person.”
My heart thudded.
“A young woman who looked remarkably like Emily.”
Marisol looked up from her notes.
I shook my head.
“I was at work.”
The notary hesitated.
“I believe you,” he said.
May you like
“Because I saw that same woman again yesterday.”
