Chương 4
At the school entrance, Eliza held the flattened snowflake. The cookbooks had improved it, though two points remained bent.
“You can make a new one,” Claire said.
“I want this one.”
“All right.”
Eliza tucked it into her backpack. Then she turned back and held Claire around the waist with unexpected force.
“I’m picking you up,” Claire said.
“I know.”
“You’ll come home to this house.”
“I know.”
Neither of them moved for several seconds.
Claire arrived at work forty minutes late.
She worked for Hartwell Infrastructure, a regional engineering firm with gray cubicles, unreliable elevators, and more framed bridge photographs than any building needed. Her current project involved replacing two aging overpasses on the county beltway. A design review was scheduled for Friday. Twelve people would attend, including a state engineer who treated minor inconsistencies as moral failures.
Claire’s supervisor, Naomi Chen, intercepted her near the printer.
“You missed the drainage call.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Everything okay?”
The normal answer rose automatically. Fine.
Claire looked at Naomi’s face. Naomi was not warm, exactly, but she was precise. Precision had become attractive.
“My family tried to arrange the sale of my house yesterday without my permission.”
Naomi blinked once. “That is not what I expected you to say.”
“There’s a fake email account and a forged signature.”
“Do you need to leave?”
“I need to find an attorney. I also need to finish the load calculations before noon.”
Naomi glanced toward the conference room. “Finish the calculations. Then take the afternoon. I’ll move the internal review.”
“I can stay.”
“That wasn’t a test, Claire.”
Claire swallowed.
“Thank you.”
Naomi started to walk away, then stopped. “Change your passwords.”
“I did.”
“All of them?”
Claire had changed three.
Naomi raised an eyebrow.
“I will.”
By noon, Claire had completed the calculations twice and trusted neither set. She handed them to Miguel Alvarez, the senior structural engineer across the aisle.
“Can you review these before I send them?”
“You’ve never asked me to review a basic bearing load.”
“I’m trying something new called admitting I’m distracted.”
Miguel took the pages. “Is it contagious?”
“Probably.”
He looked at her for a moment, then nodded without asking.
The employee assistance program gave Claire three names. The first attorney did not handle real estate fraud. The second was on vacation. The third, Evelyn Price, returned Claire’s call at one fifteen and asked questions faster than Claire could answer them.
Was there a signed listing agreement? Did the realtor rely on a power of attorney? Had anyone attempted to transfer title? Did the fake account send a copy of Claire’s identification? Did family members have access to her Social Security number? Had Claire recently applied for credit? Was there a trust, inheritance, loan, or business relationship connecting the parties?
Claire told her about the promissory note.
“Do you owe your father money?”
“No.”
“Can you prove that?”
“Not yet.”
“That answer is better than pretending.”
Evelyn offered a consultation that afternoon.
Her office occupied the second floor above a bakery. The waiting room smelled like cinnamon and printer toner. Evelyn was a compact woman in her fifties with silver hair cut close to her jaw. She wore a green dress and running shoes.
She read Dana’s forwarded emails, Frank’s voicemail transcript, the old promissory note, and Daniel’s email to the accountant.
“The good news,” she said, “is that no one can sell your house merely by announcing it in your backyard.”
Claire waited.
“The less good news is that someone impersonated you, used a copy of your identification, created a false written authorization, and entered your home under that pretense.”
“Can I make them delete the photographs?”
“We can demand it. We can also require the brokerage to preserve copies as evidence while restricting any other use.”
“I don’t want pictures of Eliza’s room sitting on someone’s server.”
“I understand.”
“No, I mean—”
“I do understand. But deleting evidence before we know what happened may help the people who did this.”
Claire looked toward the window. Below, a man in a white apron carried trays from a van into the bakery.
“What happens if I report it?”
“To the police?”
“Yes.”
“They may treat it as attempted fraud or identity theft. They may decide no completed financial loss occurred and refer you to civil remedies. They may interview your father, your sister, your brother-in-law, and the realtor. Results vary.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you still secure your records, send preservation notices, confirm title, freeze your credit, replace identification if necessary, and decide whether you want a formal demand. But I need to ask something uncomfortable.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why does your father believe you might agree?”
Claire sat back.
“He thinks persistence is the same as permission.”
“Perhaps. But he scheduled a realtor. He created urgency. He expected access to your home. People take risks when they think they have leverage.”
“He helped with the down payment twelve years ago. Daniel repaid him.”
“Your father may disagree.”
“He was paid.”
“Then prove it. What else?”
“My sister’s husband is obsessed with this house.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s larger than theirs. Because it’s in a better school district. Because Kevin believes a family requires two parents and preferably a kitchen island.”
Evelyn did not smile. “Money trouble?”
“Kevin always looks like he’s doing well.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Claire thought about Kevin’s suit, the new car every three years, the vacations photographed from angles that concealed hotel parking lots. She thought about Teresa’s anxious eyes on the patio.
“I don’t know.”
“You need to find out.”
“I’m not going through their finances.”
“No. You’re going through yours.”
May you like
Evelyn gave her a list. Credit reports. Property title search. Account review. Old tax records. Copies of Daniel’s estate documents. Any power of attorney Claire had signed after his death. Access logs for the home alarm. Password resets. A police report was left at the bottom with no check mark beside it.
“You don’t have to decide everything today,” Evelyn said.
