Chapter 16 - My Mother's Last No
Two days later, Ortiz played a verified recording from Grant's backup drive in a quiet conference room. Nora sat beside me. Claire was still recovering upstairs.
Mom's voice filled the room, thinner than I remembered but steady.
"I'll pay the creditors myself, Grant. I will not sign over the orchard."
Grant answered, "Mallory is your daughter. You can't leave her drowning."
"I can help her without letting you take my house."
A chair scraped.
"Sign the papers, Evelyn. The closing can solve everything."
"No. And you can stop telling my daughter that no means I don't love her."
I bent forward, hands over my face. I had heard that voice read bedtime stories, call us inside for dinner, and sing off-key in the kitchen. Hearing her tell him no was almost unbearable.
The recording continued. Grant said he would "handle the signatures another way." Mom told him to leave. He laughed once, short and ugly, before the file ended.
"Why would he keep that?" I asked.
Ortiz pointed to a time stamp. "He had cut a shorter version where her first sentence sounded like agreement. The unedited file was in a backup folder he didn't delete."
The bank's records also linked the post-death transfer to Grant's office network. Investigators had enough to seek criminal charges for forgery and financial fraud. They arrested him that afternoon.
"What happens to Mallory?" I asked.
"Her cooperation may matter at sentencing. It won't erase the assault or her role in the financial crimes."
I went upstairs and told Claire we finally had Mom's voice saying no.
She touched the cross-shaped space at her throat. "Your mother was scared," she whispered. "But not of dying."
"Of what?"
May you like
Claire looked at me with tears in her eyes.
"She was scared Mallory would think the necklace meant she'd stopped loving her."
