Chapter 3: What Was in the Folder
The officer pulled a second document from behind the deed and held it out to me without a word.
It was a notarized power of attorney.
My name was on it — as the grantor.
Teresa Bradley was listed as the agent.
It gave her authority over my bank accounts, my property, and any financial decisions made on my behalf in the event that I was "incapacitated or unreachable."
The date at the bottom was eleven months ago.
"I never signed this," I said.
"We can see that," the officer said quietly.
"The signature doesn't match the deed either.
We'll need both documents for the investigation."
I looked at Mason.
He had stopped trying to explain himself.
He was staring at the ground, arms crossed, jaw tight.
"Mason." My voice came out flat.
"Did you notarize this?"
He didn't answer.
"He's a notary," Betsy said from behind me.
"Has been for six years.
Teresa knew that."
The room had gone very quiet.
The relatives who had been laughing and eating an hour ago were now pressed against the walls, nobody making eye contact.
My mother was still in handcuffs near the back door.
One of the officers was speaking to her in a low voice.
She wasn't screaming anymore.
She was watching me read the document, and her expression had changed completely.
The pride was gone.
What replaced it was something I had never seen on her face before.
Calculation.
"Connor." Her voice was controlled now, almost gentle.
"Put that down and come talk to me.
Just the two of us.
Before this goes any further."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"There is.
You don't understand what I was trying to protect you from."
Amy's hand tightened on my arm.
"Protect me," I repeated.
"Amy's family," Teresa said.
"Her father has debts.
Real ones.
I have documents — I can show you.
I was moving the assets so that if her family came after you legally, they couldn't touch the house.
I did it for you."
The officer beside her cleared his throat.
"Ma'am, I'd advise you not to—"
"I'm talking to my son." She didn't raise her voice, but the officer stopped.
"Connor.
Everything I did was to protect what you built.
Amy doesn't understand this family.
She never has."
I looked at Amy.
Her face was completely still.
"Is any of that true?" I asked her.
"Does your father have debts?"
"My father passed away two years ago," Amy said.
"Your mother came to his funeral."
The room was silent.
Teresa's expression didn't break.
That was the part that frightened me most — that she heard Amy say that, and nothing moved in her face at all.
"I want a lawyer," she said.
The officer nodded.
"That's your right."
They walked her toward the front door.
She didn't look at Amy as she passed.
She looked at me, and what she said next was quiet enough that only I could hear it.
"This isn't finished, Connor.
You think you know what's in that folder.
You don't."
The door closed behind her.
I stood in my own living room, holding my sick son, surrounded by relatives who couldn't look at me, and I turned back to the officer.
"She said there's more," I told him.
"In the folder."
He glanced down at the documents in his hand.
"There are three more pages we haven't gone through yet."
He set the folder on the kitchen table, open.
Amy leaned in beside me.
Frederick stirred in my arms, whimpering softly.
The third page was a bank statement.
Thirty-six thousand dollars.
Transferred out of the joint account Amy and I had opened when we got married.
Transferred in twelve installments over the past year — three thousand dollars each month, exactly the amount I had been sending Teresa for "household support."
May you like
The transfers had not gone to Teresa's account.
They had gone to Mason's.
