Chapter 2 - A Different Story for the Police
My silent alert had reached the monitoring service, which requested an urgent police response.
Officer Elena Reyes stepped inside with another officer and two paramedics.
She looked first at my forehead, then at the broken ceramic on the floor.
“Who was injured?” she asked.
“An accident,” Diane answered immediately.
“She tripped, and the plate—”
“I threw it,” Marissa snapped.
“She was threatening my family.”
The room went quiet.
Officer Reyes took out a notebook.
“Ma'am, sit down, please.”
Tyler reached for a chair, but I waved him off.
I would not let him pretend to rescue me from a situation he'd helped create.
“My name is Eleanor Hart,” I told the officer.
“This is my house.
My grandson's wife threw a ceramic dinner plate at my head after I refused to transfer another property to her parents.”
Marcus tried to slide past the doorway.
The second officer gently blocked him.
“Stay until we have everyone's information, sir.”
A paramedic examined my forehead while Reyes asked for separate statements.
Marissa said I had lunged at her.
Diane said she couldn't remember.
Marcus suddenly knew nothing about paperwork.
Tyler wouldn't meet my eyes.
“Did you lunge?” Reyes asked me quietly.
“No.”
“Any witnesses willing to say so?”
I studied my grandson.
His lips parted, then closed.
My heart hurt worse than my head.
“There may be something better than a witness,” I said.
The little security camera above the kitchen doorway blinked once.
It had been there for eighteen months, installed after someone tried to break into the garage.
Everyone knew about it.
Apparently, everyone had forgotten.
I gave Reyes the location of the recording hub.
Marissa's face drained.
“That's private,” she said.
“You can't use that against family.”
Officer Reyes looked at the blood on my napkin.
“An investigation isn't a family argument.”
As the paramedics guided me toward the ambulance, I saw one page slip from Marcus's folder and settle beneath the sideboard.
At the top were three words I'd never agreed to:
May you like
IRREVOCABLE PROPERTY ASSIGNMENT.
And below them, in black ink, was a signature that looked exactly like mine.
