Chapter 4 - The Agreement With Emma's Name
For the first time that night, I believed Victoria.
Not because I trusted her.
Because I recognized the expression on her face.
I had worn it myself seven years earlier.
The expression of someone seeing her own name attached to something she had never done.
Ethan held up the document.
“You expect me to believe both signatures were forged?”
“I don't care what you believe,” Victoria said.
Her voice shook.
That was new.
“My name is there. I didn't sign it.”
Richard closed the archive door.
“How did you know we were here?”
Victoria stared at him.
“I followed you.”
“Why?”
“Because all three of you were looking at me as if I'd destroyed their lives.”
“You signed for Emma's letter.”
“One letter.”
“Did you give it to Ethan?”
She opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
Ethan noticed.
“No.”
Victoria looked down.
“No.”
My chest tightened.
“What did you do with it?”
“I gave it to someone else.”
“Who?”
She looked at Richard.
“Your wife.”
Silence.
Ethan's mother, Catherine Blackwood, had died four years ago.
Ethan stepped forward.
“My mother?”
Victoria nodded.
“She saw me carrying the mail. She noticed Emma's name. She told me Ethan didn't want anything from Emma reaching him.”
Ethan looked sick.
“And you believed her?”
“You had just come back from London furious. Everyone said Emma had taken money and disappeared. Yes, Ethan. I believed your mother.”
“What happened to the letter?”
“I gave it to Catherine.”
“Did you sign for others?”
“No.”
Richard looked through the records.
“The signature appears on three.”
“Then someone copied it.”
Ethan sank against the cabinet.
The mystery had grown instead of shrinking.
Catherine had hated our relationship.
That wasn't a secret.
But hatred didn't explain forged financial records, a fabricated custody waiver, blocked communications, or Martin Vale's disappearance.
Richard opened another folder.
“I investigated Catherine before she died.”
Ethan looked at him.
“You investigated Mom?”
“I discovered payments she couldn't explain.”
“To Vale?”
“No.”
Richard placed bank statements on the table.
“To someone identified only as M.V. Consulting.”
Martin Vale.
Maybe.
Or someone who wanted us to think so.
I examined the transactions.
The dates continued after Martin Vale supposedly disappeared.
“That doesn't make sense.”
Richard nodded.
“Exactly.”
Victoria approached.
“There is something else.”
We turned.
She looked at Ethan.
“Your mother called me the night Emma left New York.”
My pulse accelerated.
“What did she say?”
Victoria hesitated.
“She said, ‘It's finished. He'll thank me someday.’”
Ethan closed his eyes.
I expected rage.
Instead, he whispered:
“She did this.”
Richard immediately said, “We don't know that.”
“She hated Emma.”
“She opposed the relationship. That's not proof she engineered everything.”
“Who else?”
I looked down at the custody waiver.
One detail bothered me.
The date.
I read it again.
Then again.
“Richard.”
He looked at me.
“This document was created six weeks after I signed the agreement.”
“Yes.”
“By then I was pregnant.”
Ethan stared at me.
“But nobody knew.”
“One person did.”
Every face turned toward me.
My heart began pounding.
I hadn't thought about her in years.
Not really.
Because some betrayals are so old you stop calling them betrayals and simply build your life around the scar.
Ethan stepped closer.
“Who?”
“My mother's nurse.”
Richard frowned.
“A nurse?”
“She wasn't really a nurse.”
I remembered the woman sitting beside my mother's hospital bed.
Kind eyes.
Soft voice.
She had brought tea.
She had held my hand when I cried.
She had been the first person I told after the pregnancy test.
Richard asked, “What was her name?”
I whispered it.
“Laura Vale.”
Ethan's face changed.
“Vale?”
I nodded.
“She told me Martin Vale was her brother.”
Richard reached for his phone.
Before he could unlock it, the lights in the archive went out.
Darkness swallowed us.
Victoria gasped.
A metallic click came from the other side of the door.
Ethan reached for the handle.
It wouldn't move.
Then Richard's phone lit up with an incoming message.
He looked at the screen.
The sender's name made him stop.
May you like
CATHERINE BLACKWOOD.
His dead wife's number was calling.
