“Who is Susan?”
Robert asked the question a second time.
Nobody moved.
Patrice stood beside the staircase with her arms folded tightly across her chest. Karen remained near the patio door. I stayed by the dining table, watching all three of them.
Finally, Patrice laughed.
It sounded forced.
“You know Susan.”
“I know you have a cousin named Susan,” Robert said. “I want to know why she is preparing legal documents about my mother.”
Patrice glanced at me.
That glance mattered.
She was not frightened of Robert.
She was frightened of what I knew.
“She works around estate planning,” Patrice said. “I asked for advice.”
“Advice?”
“Yes.”
“About Mom’s house?”
“About planning for the future.”
There was that word again.
Planning.
A harmless word being used as wrapping paper.
Robert stepped toward her.
“Did she prepare those documents?”
“Some of them.”
“Did Mom ask her to?”
Patrice sighed. “No.”
“Did I?”
She did not answer.
My stomach tightened.
Robert noticed too.
“I asked you a question.”
“She was creating options.”
“Options for whom?”
“For us.”
I spoke before Robert could.
“Did those options include taking my house?”
Patrice looked at me sharply.
“Nobody is taking anything.”
“Then show Robert your messages with Susan.”
Her expression changed.
I continued.
“Especially the one telling you to get my signature before I talked to anyone.”
Robert turned toward me.
“What?”
I told him what I had seen.
Patrice’s face reddened.
“You were spying on my phone?”
“I was awake on a couch ten feet away.”
“That message is being taken completely out of context.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Show us the context.”
Robert held out his hand.
“Give me your phone.”
“No.”
That single word altered the room.
Robert stared at her.
“Why not?”
“My private conversations are none of your mother’s business.”
“They became her business when you started preparing documents about her property.”
Patrice looked at Karen.
Her mother immediately looked away.
Robert saw it.
“What do you know?”
Karen shook her head.
“Nothing about legal documents.”
“About what, then?”
“Robert,” Patrice warned.
Karen flinched.
That reaction made me study her more closely.
She knew something.
Maybe not everything.
Enough to be afraid.
Robert pointed toward the living room.
“Inside. The children don’t need to hear this.”
David and Sophie were still near the pool.
Their laughter drifted through the glass doors.
For once, everyone agreed.
We moved into the living room.
Patrice remained standing.
Robert sat forward on the edge of a chair.
“Start at the beginning.”
“There is no beginning.”
“Then I’ll make one.”
He counted on his fingers.
“You contacted Susan about Mom.”
Silence.
“You had legal papers prepared.”
Silence.
“You knew those papers could give me control over her property.”
Patrice shifted her weight.
“You wanted her signature before she talked to an attorney.”
Nothing.
Robert lowered his hand.
“And somehow you assumed I would participate.”
That made Patrice laugh.
“You would have.”
His expression changed.
“What?”
“You always do.”
“Always do what?”
“Complain, object, pretend you’re uncomfortable—and then accept whatever happens.”
The sentence landed harder than she intended.
Because it was true.
I had seen that quality in my son for years.
Robert rarely initiated cruelty.
He simply allowed other people to make uncomfortable decisions, then told himself he had not chosen them.
The couch was a perfect example.
He had not told me to sleep there.
He had merely watched Patrice do it.
Silence was not innocence.
Robert seemed to understand that at the same moment I did.
His shoulders lowered.
“So you expected Mom to sign, and then I’d go along with it?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You say that now.”
“I would never take her house.”
Patrice’s expression hardened.
“You complain about money constantly.”
Robert looked at her.
“Our money.”
“Exactly.”
“The mortgage. Tuition. Credit cards. Everything.”
She gestured toward me.
“Meanwhile, Eleanor has a paid-off house and money sitting in accounts doing nothing.”
Robert went pale.
I felt my own breathing change.
“How do you know what is in my accounts?”
Patrice hesitated.
“I don’t.”
“You just said you did.”
“I meant generally.”
Robert shook his head.
“I’ve never told you Mom’s balances.”
“You talk.”
“Not about that.”
Patrice looked away.
Then a memory surfaced.
Six months earlier, Robert had come to my house to install a printer.
A bank statement had been on my desk.
Patrice had arrived unexpectedly with Sophie.
She had gone upstairs to use the bathroom.
She had been gone almost twenty minutes.
I looked at her.
“You searched my desk.”
Her eyes flickered.
“I did not.”
“You opened the drawer.”
“I was looking for a pen.”
I felt something inside me sharpen.
“The drawer was locked.”
Patrice’s head snapped toward me.
I had never said that before.
Nobody spoke.
Robert stood slowly.
“You opened her locked desk?”
Patrice’s mouth tightened.
“I found the key.”
“Why?”
“I told you.”
“To find a pen?”
She said nothing.
Robert looked physically ill.
I felt strangely calm.
“What did you see?”
Patrice shook her head.
“Nothing useful.”
“Useful?”
She closed her eyes.
Another mistake.
Robert paced once across the room.
“Did you copy anything?”
“No.”
“Photograph anything?”
“No.”
“Tell Susan?”
“No.”
The answers came too quickly.
I did not believe them.
Then Robert said, “How much money do you think Mom has?”
Patrice stared at him.
“That’s not the point.”
“It became the point when you started calculating what she could solve for us.”
Patrice’s anger broke through.
“You want to pretend you never thought about it?”
Robert stopped.
“What?”
“You’re telling me you never once thought about what happens when your mother dies?”
The words seemed to make the air colder.
I spoke quietly.
“I’m standing right here.”
Patrice looked at me.
For once, she appeared embarrassed.
Only briefly.
“Everyone thinks about inheritance.”
“No,” I said. “Everyone does not plan around it.”
She opened her mouth.
I continued.
“My money is not family money.”
“It will be eventually.”
Robert stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“Stop.”
Patrice stared at him.
“What?”
“Listen to yourself.”
“I’m being practical.”
“You’re talking about Mom as if she’s already dead.”
Karen covered her mouth.
I looked at Patrice.
She had no answer.
Then my phone rang.
Daniel.
I stepped away and answered.
“Eleanor, I’ve been examining the photographs.”
“What did you find?”
“One of the forms concerns me.”
I glanced at Patrice.
“Which one?”
“The property transfer.”
“What about it?”
“It doesn’t appear to come from Susan’s company.”
I turned away from the room.
“Then where did it come from?”
“I’m checking.”
His tone told me there was more.
“What else?”
“Someone contacted your bank three weeks ago.”
My mouth went dry.
“Who?”
“They asked what would be required to add an authorized person to your accounts.”
I gripped the phone.
“Was it Susan?”
“No.”
“Patrice?”
“No.”
My eyes moved to Robert.
Daniel said his name.
For a moment, I heard nothing else.
Across the room, my son watched me.
“What happened?” he asked.
I lowered the phone.
“Someone called my bank three weeks ago.”
His face changed before I said anything else.
That was enough.
Patrice saw it too.
Then she smiled.
It was not amusement.
It was relief.
Robert swallowed.
“Mom.”
“Daniel says the caller gave your name.”
“I can explain.”
I stared at him.
For the last hour, I had been deciding whether my son was weak, deceived, or complicit.
Now I knew at least one thing.
He had been hiding something.
“Then explain.”
Robert glanced at Patrice.
She folded her arms.
“Go ahead,” she said.
He looked back at me.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
The words hurt more than anything Patrice had said.
“What wasn’t?”
Robert closed his eyes.
Then he told me something I had not expected.
“Susan contacted me before she ever contacted Patrice.”
I felt the floor beneath me become strangely uncertain.
The man I had spent the afternoon believing might need protection from his wife had known Susan first.
And suddenly I had no idea which person in the room had started the plan to take control of my life.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: My Son Finally Admitted Why He Called My Bank, Then Karen Revealed the Expense Nobody Had Told Him About
I Paid for the Family Vacation, Then Heard Patrice Decide Exactly Where I Was Allowed to Sleep
Part 3 of 35
