Chapter 11 - TEN MILLION REASONS
I looked from the policy to my husband.
Caden turned white.
“I’ve never seen that.”
Bonnie smiled.
“Of course you haven’t. You don’t pay attention to anything until it screams.”
I stared at her. “You opened a life-insurance policy on me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“The application uses my medical history.”
She shrugged. “Your husband knows your medical history.”
Caden stood. “Mom, what did you do?”
Bonnie’s expression hardened.
“Everything I did was to protect you.”
“From my wife?”
“From being owned by her.”
He shook his head. “You forged her signature.”
“Don’t be naive.”
That sentence broke something between them.
I could see it.
Not because Bonnie admitted wrongdoing. Because she dismissed it as necessary.
Priya arrived with a private investigator ten minutes later. I had sent her a photo of the policy.
The investigator examined the pages.
“This agent number is real,” he said. “But the broker left the industry last year.”
“Can we find him?”
“We can try.”
Bonnie laughed. “You’re making a circus out of paperwork.”
I turned to her.
Her smile faded.
“You should stop talking.”
“For once, Bonnie, I agree.”
Police arrived twenty minutes later to take a report.
She refused to answer questions without counsel.
Caden stayed across the street that night.
He slept in the old house alone.
At 2:06 a.m., the mansion alarm woke me.
Not the perimeter alarm.
The nursery window sensor.
I ran down the hall barefoot.
Donovan’s bed was empty.
May you like
The window stood open.
And on the carpet beneath it was Bonnie’s gold bracelet.
