Chapter 3
I laughed.
I couldn’t help it.
The sound came out sharp and almost hysterical.
“My mother isn’t dead?”
Dad didn’t smile.
That made it worse.
“You stood beside me at her funeral.”
“I know.”
“I watched them lower her coffin into the ground.”
“I know.”
“I spent seven years believing my mother was dead.”
Dad looked down.
“I know.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Sarah—”
“No.”
The police officers were still moving through my kitchen, but they suddenly felt very far away.
My husband had beaten me.
My signature had apparently been forged.
My house had somehow been transferred to a company tied to my mother’s family.
And now my father was telling me the woman whose grave I visited every Christmas was alive.
I pushed myself up.
Pain exploded across my back.
Dad reached for me.
“Sit down.”
“Don’t touch me.”
He stopped.
The hurt in his face almost made me feel guilty.
Almost.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It isn’t.”
“You lied about her being dead for seven years!”
Dad lowered his voice.
“I lied because she asked me to.”
That hit harder than anything Ryan had done.
“She asked you?”
“Yes.”
“So she chose this?”
His eyes filled with regret.
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“It sounds simple.”
One of the officers approached us.
“Ma’am, paramedics are outside. We’d like you checked.”
“I’m fine.”
Dad looked at me.
“You’re not.”
I glared at him.
“You don’t get to tell me what I am right now.”
He nodded.
“You’re right.”
That answer made me angrier.
I wanted him to fight.
I wanted him to explain.
I wanted him to say he had misspoken.
Instead, he stood there looking like a man who had been waiting years for his punishment.
The paramedics convinced me to go to the hospital.
Dad rode behind the ambulance.
I spent almost three hours being examined.
Nothing was broken, but I had deep bruising across my shoulder, ribs, and back.
The doctor wanted me to stay overnight.
I refused.
I wanted answers.
Dad was sitting in the hallway when I came out.
He stood immediately.
“How bad?”
“Bad enough.”
He looked ashamed.
I almost told him it wasn’t his fault.
Then I remembered my mother.
“Take me home.”
“Sarah, the police are still processing—”
“Not my house.”
He understood.
His house.
The home where I had grown up.
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting at the same dining-room table where my mother used to help me with homework.
Her photograph was still on the wall.
Mom smiling at a beach.
Mom holding me when I graduated college.
Mom and Dad at my wedding rehearsal dinner.
I stared at it.
“Take it down.”
Dad followed my eyes.
“Sarah.”
“Take it down.”
He removed the frame.
I watched him place it facedown.
Then I said, “Start talking.”
Dad sat across from me.
“Your mother’s maiden name was Claire Fairmont.”
“I know.”
“The Fairmont family had money. A lot of money.”
“I know that too.”
What I hadn’t known was how ugly that money had become.
Dad told me my grandfather, Harrison Fairmont, had spent decades building a real-estate company.
When my mother married Dad, Harrison hated it.
Dad didn’t come from wealth.
He owned a small construction company then.
Grandfather wanted Mom to marry someone from his world.
She refused.
When I was born, things got worse.
Harrison became obsessed with controlling my future.
“He created trusts,” Dad said. “Accounts. Property structures.”
“For me?”
“Supposedly.”
I watched his face.
“But?”
“But nothing in that family came without strings.”
The house Ryan and I lived in had originally belonged to a Fairmont subsidiary.
Years later, after my grandfather died, Mom arranged for Dad to purchase it quietly and eventually transfer it to me.
“Why?”
“Because she believed some members of her family were hiding assets.”
“What members?”
Dad hesitated.
“My mother’s brother?”
He nodded.
“Your uncle Victor.”
I barely remembered Victor.
He had attended my mother’s funeral.
He hugged me.
He cried.
I suddenly felt sick.
“Keep going.”
Dad explained that my mother had discovered financial crimes involving Fairmont companies.
Shell corporations.
Fraudulent transfers.
Money moved through properties.
She planned to cooperate with federal investigators.
Then threats started.
A car followed her.
Someone broke into our house.
She received photographs of me leaving work.
My hands went cold.
“You never told me.”
“She begged me not to.”
“So the solution was pretending she died?”
Dad’s voice cracked.
“There was an accident.”
I leaned forward.
“What accident?”
“Her car went off a mountain road.”
I remembered that.
That was the story I had been told.
The body had supposedly been badly burned.
I never saw it.
Dad had said it was better that way.
Now I understood why.
“She wasn’t in the car?”
“No.”
“Whose body was in the coffin?”
Dad looked devastated.
“There wasn’t one.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“The casket was sealed.”
“You buried an empty coffin.”
“Yes.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“You let me mourn an empty coffin!”
“I was trying to keep you alive!”
I slapped my palm against the table.
“You could have told me!”
“If Victor believed you knew she was alive, you became leverage.”
“I was already leverage!”
Dad went silent.
Because he knew I was right.
I paced slowly despite the pain.
“Where did she go?”
“Witness protection was discussed, but your mother refused to tell me her exact location.”
“You never heard from her?”
“Twice.”
My heart stopped.
“When?”
“Once three months after the funeral.”
“And the other?”
He looked away.
“Two years ago.”
I stared at him.
“Two years ago?”
“She contacted me through an attorney.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“She asked about you.”
I could barely breathe.
“What did you tell her?”
“That you were married. That you seemed happy.”
Happy.
The word felt cruel now.
“Did you tell her about Ryan?”
“Yes.”
Dad suddenly looked uneasy.
“What?”
“She reacted strangely to his name.”
My stomach tightened.
“How?”
“She asked me where he worked.”
Ryan worked in commercial lending.
At least that was what I believed.
“She asked whether his company had ever done business with Fairmont?”
“Yes.”
I sat back down.
“Did it?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.”
Dad nodded toward the copy of the deed he had brought from my house.
“Fairmont Residential Holdings officially dissolved years ago.”
“But the deed was transferred to it six months ago.”
“Yes.”
“So someone reopened it?”
“Or created something with an almost identical name.”
I thought about Ryan forcing the paperwork toward me.
The rage when I refused.
The second deed.
“Maybe he didn’t marry me for me.”
Dad immediately said, “Don’t do that to yourself.”
“What else am I supposed to think?”
“We don’t know yet.”
I looked at him.
“You apparently know a lot of things I don’t.”
He flinched.
My phone was broken, so Dad gave me an old one to use.
At almost midnight, it rang.
Unknown number.
Dad and I looked at each other.
“Don’t answer,” he said.
I answered.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then a woman breathed into the phone.
My hand tightened around it.
“Who is this?”
Her voice came softly.
“Sarah?”
Every hair on my arms rose.
I knew that voice.
It had lived in my memories for seven years.
I couldn’t speak.
The woman started crying.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
My knees weakened.
“Mom?”
Dad stood.
I covered my mouth.
The woman on the phone whispered, “Listen to me carefully. Ryan knows where I am.”
I stared at my father.
“What?”
“I made a mistake. I tried to contact you through him.”
My skin went cold.
“When?”
“Eight months ago.”
The house had been transferred six months ago.
I gripped the phone.
“Why would you contact Ryan?”
“Because I thought your father’s phone might be monitored. Ryan was your husband. I thought I could trust him.”
My stomach twisted.
“You couldn’t.”
“I know that now.”
I heard fear in her voice.
Real fear.
“Mom, where are you?”
“I can’t tell you yet.”
“Seven years!”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to call me after seven years and tell me you can’t tell me where you are!”
“I’m sorry.”
“That isn’t enough!”
Dad reached toward me.
I turned away.
My mother said, “Sarah, Ryan didn’t just steal your house.”
I went silent.
“What did he steal?”
A pause.
Then she said, “Your identity.”
I stared at the dark window.
“I don’t understand.”
“He has been using your name to access accounts your grandfather created for you.”
My heartbeat pounded in my ears.
“What accounts?”
“Accounts worth more than twelve million dollars.”
I couldn’t speak.
Mom continued.
“And if Ryan succeeds with what he’s doing, the house will be the least important thing he takes from you.”
“What is he trying to do?”
Her next words changed everything.
“He’s trying to prove you’re legally incompetent.”
I felt the room tilt.
“Why?”
“So he can control everything in your name.”
Dad moved closer.
I whispered, “How?”
Mom answered.
“By making everyone believe you’re mentally unstable.”
I thought of Ryan’s words to police.
She’s dramatic.
She fell.
She attacked me first.
Then I remembered something else.
For months, Ryan had been telling people I was forgetful.
Emotional.
Confused.
I had laughed it off.
Suddenly none of it felt harmless.
“Mom.”
“Yes?”
“Where is Ryan now?”
“I don’t know.”
“He was arrested tonight.”
Silence.
Then my mother said something that made my blood freeze.
“No, Sarah.”
“What?”
“Ryan expected to be arrested.”
Dad stared at me.
I swallowed.
“What are you talking about?”
“This was supposed to happen.”
I gripped the phone.
“Why?”
“Because while everyone is focused on the assault…”
May you like
She took a shaky breath.
“…someone else is going to empty the trust.”
