“Sit down, Amelia,” my stepmother said, sitting in my dead father’s leather chair like she had inherited his spine.

PART 3

“Let me tell you what my lawyer found,” I said, and I watched Lucas go pale.

“Amelia, don’t,” he said.

“Dad’s company,” I continued, “has been quietly hemorrhaging money for the last eighteen months. Not from market conditions. From withdrawals. Transfers to accounts that trace back, when you follow them far enough, to you, Lucas. And to you,” I said, turning to my stepmother. “The two of you have been draining the company while Dad was sick, betting that he wouldn’t notice and that when he died, you could close the books before anyone looked too closely.”

Aunt Kathleen made a small sound. “Lucas? Is that, that can’t be true.”

“It’s true,” I said. “And the reason they needed me to sign away my right to see the company records, the reason they needed me locked in a facility in Knoxville for thirty days, is that I’m the only heir with the legal standing to demand a forensic audit. If I sign that paper, I give up the right to look. If I’m declared unstable and tucked away, I can’t act in time. Either way, the embezzlement stays buried, probate closes, and the two of you keep what you stole.” I looked at my stepmother, sitting in my father’s chair. “That’s what tonight was really about. Not my grief. Your theft.”

My stepmother’s calm finally shattered. “You have no proof. This is exactly the kind of delusional, obsessive—”

“I have proof,” I said. “My lawyer has proof. The transfers are documented. The accounts are traced. And the audit is already underway, because I authorized it last week, the same day I asked to see the documents, because I already suspected what you’d done.” I let that land. “That’s who keeps texting me. Not a friend. Not a delusion. My attorney, updating me on the forensic accounting. I came here tonight knowing exactly what you were going to try. I wanted to see how far you’d go. I wanted to watch you hand out scripts and call my dead father’s daughter unstable for the crime of asking questions. And now I have.”

The room was silent. Lucas had sat down heavily. Hannah was staring at her husband as if seeing him for the first time. Aunt Kathleen was weeping, but the tears had changed; they were no longer for my supposed instability but for the discovery of what her family had become.

“The forty thousand dollars,” I said quietly. “That was the cruelest part, honestly. You didn’t just steal from the company. You looked at me, your sister, your stepdaughter, your niece, a woman who had just buried her father, and you decided I was worth forty thousand dollars and a lie about my sanity. You weighed my grief and my trust and my father’s love for me, and you priced it all at forty thousand dollars and a padded room in Knoxville.”

I picked up the folder marked FOR AMELIA TO SIGN, and I tore it in half, and I let the pieces fall onto the coffee table.

“I’m not signing anything,” I said. “But you will be. Lots of things. Confessions. Settlements. Possibly plea agreements. My lawyer will be in touch.”