Chapter 8 - The Report With My Name
"What exactly did I do?" I asked before Robert could answer.
Natalie stopped breathing for a beat. "Emily?"
"I'm listening."
"You're not as innocent as you act. They'll say you agreed. They have papers."
She hung up.
Tessa rolled her eyes. "That's a threat wrapped around a rumor."
But Nina told me to take it seriously. During the night, Teresa had filed a supplemental police report claiming I'd stolen financial records from Daniel's office and threatened to use them to ruin the family.
"Financial records about my own house," I said.
"Exactly. We're making sure investigators know the difference."
Deputy Price called Sunday morning. She had reviewed the urgent-care photographs and the Christmas hallway video. She wanted to take a second statement and arrange for me to recover clothes and personal documents with an officer present.
I asked whether I was under investigation.
"We're evaluating several allegations," she replied. "You have not been charged with anything."
That careful answer was better than the confidence Teresa had shown at dinner.
At the house, a cruiser waited at the curb while I packed. The dining table had been stripped, but a faint orange stain remained on the floor by the chair where I'd fallen.
Daniel stood in the doorway. "You're making a circus out of a family misunderstanding."
"I have a medical bill and a forged mortgage. Which part is the misunderstanding?"
He looked toward the officer and lowered his voice. "I can get the loan paid. Just sign the release."
I took my grandmother's mixing bowl from the cabinet instead.
"Did you know your mother would hit me?"
He said nothing.
That silence hurt more than his answer would have.
When we left, the officer handed me an item she'd found on the hall console: a printed affidavit dated December twenty-third.
May you like
It claimed I'd voluntarily moved out of the house thirty days earlier.
At the bottom, beneath another imitation of my signature, someone had written: PRESENT FOR MONDAY CLOSING.
