Chương 3
Naomi guided Victoria toward the side exit.
“Ms. Owens, did your family forge the deed?”
“Is your daughter safe?”
“Are you mentally competent to manage the property?”
That question stopped her.
Naomi’s hand pressed against the middle of her back.
“Keep walking.”
Victoria did, but the words followed her through the door.
Are you mentally competent?
The morning air felt too bright. A news van idled beside the curb. The driver drank coffee and watched them in the side mirror.
Marcus stood near Naomi’s car with the infant seat installed in his own. He wore navy hospital scrubs under an unzipped jacket and had forgotten to remove his identification badge. He took one look at Victoria’s face and did not ask what had happened.
He opened his arms for the baby.
Victoria could not let go.
“Vick,” he said quietly.
“I’ve got her.”
“I can see that.”
“She’s fine.”
“I can see that too.”
He did not move closer. Marcus had learned during the months after the birth that helping Victoria sometimes required standing still until she decided the distance between them was safe.
Naomi unlocked her car and placed the evidence receipt on the roof while she checked it.
Marcus glanced toward the courthouse doors. “The video’s online.”
“I know,” Naomi said.
“My supervisor sent it to me.”
Victoria looked at him. “Your supervisor?”
“He thought I should know before patients started showing me.”
“Patients know who you are?”
“One recognized Eleanor from the hospital foundation board.”
Of course they had. Eleanor had spent twenty years ensuring that strangers recognized her name in rooms where recognition carried weight.
Marcus lifted both hands, palms open.
“Let me put Lucy in the seat.”
The baby turned toward him when she heard her nickname. Her floral headband had slipped over one eyebrow. Marcus fixed it with one finger.
Victoria’s arm ached from holding her.
She passed him the child.
The absence of weight felt like a loss of balance. She wrapped both arms around herself while Marcus buckled Lucy into the seat and checked the straps twice.
Naomi finished reading the receipt. “The court has the deed, hospital record, scholarship certificate, petition, portfolio, and seventeen additional pages. That includes the e-filing confirmation.”
Marcus looked up. “They filed it?”
“Three weeks ago,” Victoria said.
She had found the confirmation at two that morning, clipped behind the petition. Until then, Naomi had believed the packet might be a draft.
Marcus’s face changed.
“With which court?”
“Probate. Under a confidential case category.” Naomi folded the receipt. “We’ll get access as counsel once the reassignment is processed.”
“Why didn’t anyone serve her?”
“That is one of several questions.”
A reporter emerged from the courthouse and saw them.
Naomi opened the passenger door. “We need to leave.”
Marcus touched Victoria’s elbow. “Come with me.”
“I need to go with Naomi.”
“You need sleep.”
“I need to know what they filed.”
“You’ve been awake since yesterday.”
“So have you.”
“I work nights.”
“You worked six hours. I spent six hours proving my mother forged a deed while trying not to wake a baby.”
Marcus looked at Naomi.
Naomi said, “She has a point.”
Victoria almost laughed. The sound rose in her chest and disappeared before it reached her mouth.
Marcus shut the infant-seat door gently.
“Fine. But you’re not going back to Lila’s alone.”
“I’m never alone. Everyone keeps making that very clear.”
He looked wounded, then tired.
Victoria regretted the sentence and did not take it back.
They drove in separate cars to Naomi’s office, a second-floor suite above a tax-preparation business and a shop that repaired vacuum cleaners. The waiting room had four mismatched chairs, a water dispenser, and a ficus tree that had been dying with surprising persistence since Victoria’s first appointment.
Naomi’s assistant, Kevin, closed the blinds.
Lucy woke hungry. Marcus warmed a bottle in the kitchenette while Victoria sat at the conference table and watched Naomi log into the county’s electronic filing system.
A sealed case appeared under Victoria’s name.
Eleanor Owens, Petitioner.
The filing date was twenty-two days earlier.
A note indicated that service had been attempted at Victoria’s former address—the inherited house on Ashbourne Street—even though Eleanor knew Victoria had been staying with her friend Lila since Julian changed the locks. The process server had reported no answer on two visits.
“They served the empty house,” Victoria said.
“They attempted to,” Naomi replied. “That distinction matters.”
“Does it?”
“In court, yes.”
“Outside court?”
Naomi did not answer.
The petition alleged that Victoria suffered from severe postpartum mental illness, lacked the capacity to manage property worth more than two million dollars, failed to maintain stable housing, associated with individuals who posed a risk to her child, and had become vulnerable to financial exploitation.
Marcus set the bottle on the table too hard.
“Individuals?”
Naomi read the exhibit list. “They included your dismissed disorderly-conduct citation from college.”
“I was nineteen.”
“What happened?” Victoria asked.
Marcus rubbed his jaw. “A guy shoved my roommate outside a bar. I shoved him back. The city attorney dropped it.”
Eleanor had known about the citation because Marcus had disclosed it during a background check she insisted upon before permitting him to attend the hospital’s donor gala with Victoria.
There were photographs of Lila’s apartment building, including one of a broken lobby window taken after a delivery driver accidentally backed into it. There were screenshots of late-payment notices from Victoria’s utility account. There was a statement from Eleanor describing an afternoon when Victoria had failed to answer the door for nearly an hour while Lucy cried inside.
Victoria stared at that paragraph.
The room became smaller.
Marcus pulled out a chair but did not sit.
“What afternoon?”
She looked at the table.
“Victoria.”
“I was in the bathroom.”
“You told me you were asleep.”
“I didn’t want to explain it.”
Naomi stopped scrolling.
May you like
Victoria could feel both of them waiting.
“I put Lucy in her crib,” she said. “She was safe. I went to take a shower, and then I sat down.”
