Chapter 5: What Evan Didn't Know We Already Had
Grace Holloway called back within the hour.
She was direct in the way that people are when they have been doing difficult work for a long time and have stopped softening the edges.
"Preel calling you directly is either very stupid or very calculated," she said.
"If he's trying to get ahead of this, it means he knows the documents won't hold.
If he's fishing to find out how much you know, it means he's not sure yet." A pause.
"Either way, it helps us."
"How?" I asked.
"Because now we have a record of contact.
He reached out to a potential adverse party without going through counsel.
I'll note the time and content of that call." I could hear her typing.
"Did he say anything specific about the documents?"
"He said he had notes from his meeting with my mother."
"He'll produce those notes eventually.
And when he does, we'll compare them against her hospital chart for that date." More typing.
"Daniel told me about the Thursday closing date.
I've already sent that to the capacity specialist I use.
She's reviewing the discharge assessment now."
Daniel was across the kitchen table, his own laptop open, a yellow legal pad filling up beside it.
"What about Evan?" I asked.
Grace was quiet for a moment.
"What is your brother's profession?"
"He manages a storage facility.
He's done some property work before — nothing licensed."
"Does he have a financial relationship with Preel or with the title company?"
"I don't know."
"That's what I need to find out," she said.
"Roy Cafferty's task force contact can pull transaction records if we establish probable cause.
We're not there yet, but we're close." She paused again.
"Lauren, I want to ask you something directly.
Is there any possibility your brother genuinely didn't understand what Preel was doing?
That he was used?"
I thought about Evan on the phone.
*Stop pretending you care.* The laugh when Daniel asked for documents.
The texts telling me to back off.
"No," I said.
"All right," Grace said.
"Then we build it that way."
That afternoon, Evan showed up.
He didn't knock.
He had a key — Mom's old spare, the one she'd given him years ago for emergencies.
He walked into our front hallway and stopped when he saw Daniel at the kitchen table surrounded by papers.
"Where's Mom?" he said.
"She's resting," I said.
He looked at the papers.
His jaw tightened.
"What is all this?"
"Evan," Daniel said, without standing, "you should know that anything you say right now may be relevant to an ongoing legal matter.
You're welcome to stay, but I'd recommend you call an attorney first."
Evan's eyes went to me.
"You got a lawyer involved?
Lauren, I told you—"
"The county recorder's copy of the deed is on the table," Daniel said.
"The closing was notarized on a Thursday.
Mom was assessed as cognitively impaired through the following Tuesday.
You want to explain that to me, or do you want to explain it to Grace Holloway?"
Evan's face went through several things quickly.
Anger first.
Then something that looked almost like calculation.
"The notary was present," he said.
"Mom signed.
I was there."
The room went very still.
Daniel set down his pen.
"You were present at the closing."
"I just said that."
"You told Lauren the closing was handled entirely by Preel's office.
That you weren't involved in the transaction itself."
Evan's mouth opened.
Closed.
"You want to revise that?" Daniel said.
"I was there for support," Evan said.
"Mom asked me to be there.
She was nervous."
"She was cognitively impaired," I said.
"She told me she didn't sign anything.
She told me a man came to her hospital room before she was discharged and told her that you and I had already agreed."
"That's not—" He stopped.
"That's not what?" I said.
He looked at the papers on the table again.
Something shifted in his expression — the calculation hardening into something colder.
"You don't know what you're doing," he said.
"You think you're helping her.
You're going to drag Mom through a legal process that will take years, and at the end of it she'll have nothing and you'll have legal bills and I'll be the one who actually took care of things when no one else showed up."
"Where is the money, Evan?" Daniel asked.
Silence.
"The house sold for $450,000.
The hospital bills were covered by Medicare and her supplemental insurance — I've already verified that.
So where did the sale proceeds go?"
Evan picked up his keys from where he'd set them on the counter.
"Talk to my attorney," he said.
"You just told me to call one," Daniel said.
"I'm glad you're taking your own advice."
Evan walked out.
The front door didn't slam.
That was almost worse.
Daniel looked at me across the table.
"He was there," I said.
"He was there," Daniel said.
May you like
"And he just told us."
He picked up his phone and called Grace.
