Chương 2
“Victoria Gallagher?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Deputy Morales.”
She crouched instead of towering over me.
“Who’s inside?”
“My father and his wife.”
“Your father assaulted you?”
“He grabbed my arm, then my hair.”
I touched my scalp and winced.
“He dragged me from the kitchen.”
The older deputy went to the front door and knocked.
Charles opened it almost immediately.
He had changed.
Not clothes.
Himself.
His shoulders were lower, his face composed, his voice carrying that patient tone he used with bank tellers and restaurant hosts when he wanted something.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said.
I stared at him.
The older deputy said something I could not hear.
Charles answered louder.
“My daughter is distraught.”
Of all the things he could have said, that one reached me.
I tried to stand.
Deputy Morales caught my elbow.
“Stay seated.”
“He dragged me out.”
“I know.”
“He’s lying.”
“I know what you told me.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
She looked directly at me then.
“No, it isn’t.”
A paramedic named Erin wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around my arm while another man set down a medical bag beside me.
Charles was still talking at the door.
Courtney had appeared behind him wearing one of Lucas’s old gray Cornell sweatshirts.
For a moment I could not understand what I was seeing.
Then I recognized the frayed cuff on the left sleeve.
Lucas had worn that sweatshirt on Sunday mornings when he made pancakes.
Courtney had taken it from our bedroom.
“Take that off.”
Nobody reacted.
My voice had come out too softly.
I pointed at her.
“Take that off.”
Courtney glanced down at herself.
“Oh, this?”
She folded her arms.
“I was cold.”
I lunged up before anyone could stop me.
Pain clamped around my abdomen so hard my knees nearly folded.
Erin caught me around the waist.
“Victoria, sit down.”
“She went into my bedroom.”
“Sit.”
“That belonged to my husband.”
Courtney rolled her eyes.
Charles turned on her.
“Courtney, go inside.”
It was the first crack in their performance.
She looked offended.
“You said—”
“Inside.”
The older deputy noticed.
So did I.
Courtney disappeared.
Charles stepped onto the porch but stopped when the deputy put out a hand.
“Stay there, sir.”
“This is a family misunderstanding.”
“My water broke because you threw me down.”
“I did not throw you.”
“You dragged me by my hair.”
“You were hysterical.”
“Hysterical people still have hair, Dad.”
His jaw tightened.
The paramedic took my temperature.
Deputy Morales asked whether there were cameras around the property.
I nodded.
“Doorbell camera.”
Charles answered before I could say anything.
“It hasn’t worked in months.”
I looked at him.
That was true.
At least, I had thought it was.
Lucas had complained about the battery in January, and after he died I had stopped noticing things like whether small electronics worked.
Morales asked if there were indoor cameras.
“No.”
Charles said, “No.”
We answered together.
Then my phone rang.
Samantha.
I put it on speaker because my hands had started shaking too badly to hold it steadily.
“Victoria?”
“I called 911.”
“Good.”
“I’m with deputies.”
“Even better.”
Charles turned at the sound of her voice.
Something passed across his face.
He knew who she was.
Samantha continued.
“I need to speak with whichever officer is handling the property issue.”
The older deputy stepped closer.
“This is Deputy Harrison.”
“Samantha Vance, attorney for Victoria Gallagher and counsel for the Gallagher estate.”
Charles made a disgusted sound.
“No estate attorney represents her against her own father.”
Samantha ignored him.
“Deputy Harrison, I can email you a certified deed recorded in Onondaga County showing Victoria Gallagher as a joint owner of the residence.”
Charles’s face went still.
Harrison said, “Please do.”
“There is more.”
My father moved toward the door.
Harrison blocked him again.
Samantha’s voice remained calm.
“Mr. Baldwin contacted my office yesterday and claimed Mrs. Gallagher had authorized him to liquidate certain estate assets.”
“That’s private,” Charles snapped.
Samantha finally addressed him.
“No, Charles, it became something else when you submitted a document carrying Victoria’s alleged signature.”
I stopped hearing the lawn mower.
I stopped hearing the ambulance radio.
“What document?”
Nobody answered immediately.
That frightened me more than an answer would have.
“Samantha.”
Her breath came softly through the speaker.
“Yesterday afternoon, your father emailed my office what he described as a durable financial power of attorney executed by you nine days after Lucas died.”
I stared at Charles.
“I never signed anything.”
“I know.”
Charles lifted both hands.
“Victoria, you did.”
“No.”
“You were upset.”
“No.”
“You signed papers at my house.”
“I haven’t been to your house since Mom’s funeral.”
Courtney appeared again behind the glass.
She was no longer wearing Lucas’s sweatshirt.
Samantha said, “The document was notarized.”
A new kind of fear moved through me, quieter than panic.
“By who?”
“Courtney Baldwin.”
My father closed his eyes.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
Deputy Harrison saw it too.
I could tell by the way his posture changed.
Not dramatically.
He simply stopped treating Charles like a father caught in an ugly family argument and started looking at him like a man whose words needed to be preserved.
Samantha continued.
“There is also a transfer instruction directing liquidation of holdings connected to the Gallagher family trust and the shares Lucas placed in trust for Victoria.”
Charles’s phone began ringing.
He pulled it from his pocket.
The color drained from his face before he even answered.
“Who is it?” I asked.
He rejected the call.
It rang again immediately.
Harrison said, “Sir, don’t delete anything.”
“I’m not.”
The screen was angled just enough for me to see the caller name.
MERCER PRIVATE BANK.
Samantha went silent on my phone.
Then she said, “They’re calling because I had the accounts frozen twelve minutes ago.”
Charles looked at me as though I had done something unforgivable.
May you like
For most of my life, that look had worked.
It had made me apologize for disagreeing with him, for choosing Lucas, for moving away, for refusing to hire one of his friends at our company, for leaving Christmas dinner early when my mother was sick because Charles had spent the evening insulting my husband.
