Chapter 4: The Letter She Signed
Evelyn didn't answer right away.
She looked at her hands.
The knuckles were still pale from gripping the jacuzzi ledge.
A thin red mark ran across the base of her fingers where the frosted glass edge had cut into her skin.
"Mom." Nathaniel sat down beside her.
"Talk to me."
"I don't remember signing anything," she said.
"That's what frightens me."
"Tell me what you do remember."
She exhaled slowly.
"There was an afternoon.
About six months ago.
Isabella said she needed me to look at some documents.
She said they were for the estate planning.
That you had asked her to help organize things while you were traveling."
Nathaniel had been in Singapore for three weeks in December.
He had called home every other day.
He had spoken to Evelyn.
He had spoken to Isabella.
He had never asked Isabella to touch a single document.
"She brought a man with her," Evelyn continued.
"He had a briefcase.
She introduced him as a notary.
She said it was routine.
She said you had already reviewed everything and just needed my signature to finalize it."
"And you signed."
"I signed." Evelyn's voice was very quiet.
"I was having a bad week.
I was tired.
I trusted her."
He stood up and walked to the terrace railing.
The city below was the same city it had always been.
He gripped the railing with both hands.
"What did the document look like?"
"Several pages.
I only saw the signature line.
She held it open to that page."
"Did you read any of it?"
"She said there wasn't time.
She said the notary had another appointment."
Nathaniel turned around.
"She rushed you."
"Yes."
He went inside and came back with a glass of water — not the one from the side table, which he had already moved to the kitchen counter to photograph — and handed it to his mother.
"I'm going to find out what you signed," he said.
"Tonight if I can."
"Nathaniel." Evelyn looked up at him.
"What if I gave something away?
What if she used me to — " She stopped.
Pressed her lips together.
"Whatever it is, it can be undone," he said.
"If it was obtained under false pretenses, if you weren't given the chance to read it, if you were being medicated without your knowledge — none of it holds."
"You don't know that."
"I know a very good lawyer."
He called Marcus Webb at nine forty-seven in the evening.
Marcus had been his family's attorney for eleven years.
He picked up on the second ring, heard four sentences of explanation, and said, "I'll be there in forty minutes."
While they waited, Nathaniel photographed the pill bottle from every angle.
He photographed the glass of water.
He called the building's front desk and asked them to pull the visitor log for the past eight months and not to alter or delete anything.
The man at the desk said, "Of course, Mr.
Hargrove.
Should I also pull the security footage?"
Nathaniel paused.
"Yes.
All of it."
He hadn't thought of the cameras until that moment.
The penthouse terrace had two.
He had installed them himself after a break-in two floors below, three years ago.
He had forgotten about them so completely that they had become part of the architecture.
Isabella had forgotten about them too.
Or she had never known.
Marcus arrived at ten twenty-three.
He was sixty-one, compact, and unhurried in the way that expensive lawyers learn to be.
He sat across from Evelyn at the dining table, opened his legal pad, and listened without interrupting for twelve minutes.
Then he asked three questions.
"Did anyone explain the document's contents to you before you signed?"
"No," Evelyn said.
"Were you given a copy afterward?"
"No."
"Did Isabella or the notary leave any paperwork behind?"
Evelyn thought.
"There was an envelope.
She said it was my copy.
But when I looked for it the next day, I couldn't find it."
Marcus wrote something down.
"I need the name on that pill bottle," he said to Nathaniel.
"The prescribing physician."
Nathaniel handed him the bottle.
Marcus photographed it with his own phone.
"I'll have someone locate this doctor by morning," he said.
"If the prescription was fraudulent, that's a crjminal matter, not just civil." He set the bottle down.
"The document she had signed — without knowing what it was, under time pressure, while being administered an unauthorized medication that affected her cognition — that document will not survive a challenge.
Not in any court."
Evelyn let out a breath that she seemed to have been holding for six months.
"There's something else," Nathaniel said.
Marcus looked up.
"She said to ask my mother about the letter.
She said it like it was a weapon.
Like she was confident it would hold."
"Then she believes it's airtight," Marcus said.
"Which means she had help.
Someone who knows estate law.
Someone who drafted it carefully." He tapped his pen against the pad.
"This wasn't improvised.
Someone planned this with her."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Then Evelyn said, in a voice so steady it surprised both of them: "Her brother is a solicitor.
In Edinburgh.
She mentioned him once.
She said he specialized in inheritance law."
Marcus looked at Nathaniel.
Nathaniel looked at his mother.
"You remembered that," he said.
May you like
"I remember everything," Evelyn said.
"That was always the problem for her."
