Chapter 6
I didn’t sleep again that night.
I read the last six months of Grandma’s journal three more times.
Every mention of Mom.
Every mention of the bitter tea.
Every entry where she wrote that she was scared.
She’d known.
She’d known Mom was trying to kill her.
And she’d been too scared to tell anyone.
Too ashamed.
Too worried that nobody would believe her.
At six a.m., I got up and made coffee.
Black.
Strong.
I sat at the kitchen table and stared at the birth certificate.
Mother: Evelyn Marie Bennett.
I traced the words with my finger.
Charlotte Marie Bennett.
That was my real name.
Not Charlotte Bennett, daughter of Diane and Richard.
Charlotte Marie Bennett, daughter of Evelyn.
I’d spent my whole life wondering why I never felt like I belonged.
Now I knew.
I didn’t belong with them.
I belonged with her.
And she was gone.
At nine thirty, Mr. Harris showed up with his briefcase and a thermos of what he called “coffee strong enough to strip paint.”
“Ready for this?” he asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
We met Mom and her lawyer at a conference room in Mr. Harris’s office building downtown.
Mom was wearing her best power suit.
Black.
Tailored.
Expensive.
Her hair was perfect. Her makeup was flawless.
She looked like a woman who had everything under control.
Her lawyer was a guy named Victor Strand. Big, loud, famous in Denver for getting guilty people off on technicalities. He’d made his name defending rich guys who’d killed their wives and CEOs who’d stolen from their companies.
Mom had gone all in.
Strand stood when we walked in.
“Charlotte. Arthur. Good of you to come.”
I didn’t shake his hand.
I sat down across from Mom.
She smiled at me.
Warm.
Loving.
Fake.
“Charlotte, baby. You look tired. You should be home resting, not dealing with all this ugliness.”
“Cut the crap, Diane,” Mr. Harris said. “You said you had something to discuss. Let’s hear it.”
Mom’s smile didn’t falter.
She opened her own briefcase and slid a stack of papers across the table.
“I want to make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“A full and complete settlement. Of everything. The will. The so-called embezzlement. The… unfortunate incident with Tyler at the party. All of it.”
She leaned forward.
“I’ll sign over any and all claims to Evelyn’s estate. Every penny. Every piece of property. I’ll even sign a document saying I had no knowledge of the transfers from Evelyn’s accounts. That Tyler acted alone. He’s an adult. He can take responsibility for his own actions.”
Mr. Harris picked up the papers and flipped through them.
“That’s very generous of you, Diane. What do you want in return?”
Mom looked right at me.
“Two things. First: Charlotte signs a full, sworn affidavit stating that her fall off the deck was an accident. That Tyler never touched her. That she misspoke to the police because of her concussion. All charges against Tyler are dropped. Immediately.”
I laughed.
It came out sharp and ugly.
“You want me to lie to the police and let a man who tried to kill me walk free?”
“Tyler is your brother, Charlotte.”
“He’s not my anything.”
Mom ignored me.
“Second: Charlotte signs a document promising that she will never, under any circumstances, press criminal charges against me. For anything. Past, present, or future. Full immunity. Forever.”
Mr. Harris stopped flipping pages.
He looked up at Strand.
“Your client is facing five to ten on the embezzlement charges alone. And Detective Alvarez is this close to filing murder charges against her for Evelyn’s death. And she wants to walk away with nothing more than a promise not to be prosecuted? That’s not a deal. That’s a surrender.”
Strand didn’t flinch.
“Murder charges? That’s the first I’ve heard of that.”
“Then you’re not doing your job. They’re exhuming Evelyn’s body today. Full toxicology. If they find anything in her system—anything at all—your client is looking at life without parole. And if the jury finds out she tried to kill Charlotte too? She’ll get the needle. Colorado still has the death penalty, Victor. You know that.”
Mom’s face twitched.
For half a second, the mask slipped.
I saw the fear underneath.
Then it was gone.
“Evelyn died of a heart attack,” she said, her voice steady. “Everybody knows that. All this talk of poison is just… wishful thinking on your part. You’re desperate. You know you don’t have a real case against me. The embezzlement? Evelyn gave me that money. Every dollar. She told me to take it. For Tyler. She always loved Tyler best. Everyone knows that.”
She slid another paper across the table.
A notarized letter.
Dated one month before Grandma died.
I, Evelyn Marie Bennett, being of sound mind and body, hereby gift the sum of four hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars to my beloved daughter Diane Marie Bennett, to be used for the care and education of my grandson Tyler James Bennett. This is a free and voluntary gift, given with no expectation of repayment.
It had Grandma’s signature at the bottom.
Or at least, it looked like Grandma’s signature.
Mr. Harris picked it up.
He studied it for a long time.
“Forgery,” he said finally.
“Prove it,” Strand said. “We’ve already had three independent handwriting experts examine it. All three say it’s genuine.”
“Handwriting can be faked. Evelyn was signing papers for Diane her whole life. Diane had thousands of samples to practice on.”
“Maybe. But a jury doesn’t know that. A jury sees a notarized letter from a dead woman, they’re going to believe it. Especially when Diane can produce twenty other witnesses who’ll testify that Evelyn doted on Tyler. That she’d have given him the shirt off her back.”
Mom sat back, smiling.
“Here’s how this goes, Arthur. You take the deal. Tyler walks. I walk. Charlotte gets the house and whatever’s left of the money. Everybody gets on with their lives. No messy trial. No embarrassing family secrets dragged out in front of the whole city. Or…”
She paused.
“Or you reject the deal. We go to court. I produce this letter. The embezzlement case falls apart. Then I take the stand and I tell the jury all about Charlotte’s… emotional issues. Her history of depression. Her inability to hold a job. The way she’s always been jealous of Tyler. Always making up stories to get attention. And then I tell them about the will. About how she manipulated a sick, confused old woman into leaving her everything. About how she threatened to hurt herself if Evelyn didn’t change the will.”
She looked right at me.
“Which jury do you think they’ll believe, Charlotte? The sad, grieving mother who lost her own mother? Or the unstable, jealous daughter who hit her head and can’t keep her story straight?”
The room went quiet.
She was good.
I had to give her that.
She’d spent her whole life practicing this.
Manipulation was her superpower.
Mr. Harris looked at me.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have to.
He was leaving the choice up to me.
I thought about Grandma.
About the journal.
About the night she died.
About the five-million-dollar life insurance policy.
About Tyler shoving me off that deck.
About Mom making a gun with her hand and mouthing bang.
I leaned forward across the table.
I looked Mom right in the eyes.
And I smiled.
“No deal.”
Her smile shattered.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. No deal. You want a trial? Fine. Let’s have a trial. Let’s drag every single secret out into the light. Let’s tell the whole city who you really are, Diane. Let’s tell them about the stealing. Let’s tell them about the lies. Let’s tell them how you spent twenty-five years pretending to be my mother when you knew all along I wasn’t yours.”
The color drained from her face.
Strand looked confused.
“What is she talking about, Diane?”
Mom didn’t answer.
She couldn’t.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the original birth certificate.
I slid it across the table.
“Read it, Victor. Then tell me if your client still thinks she’s got the upper hand.”
Strand picked it up.
He read it.
His eyes went wide.
He looked at Mom.
“Diane? Is this real?”
Mom was shaking.
“It’s a fake. Harris forged it. He’s been after me for years—”
“Three different state seals, Diane,” Mr. Harris said quietly. “Filed in triplicate with the vital records office. Forensics already dated the paper and the ink to 2001. It’s real. And when we introduce this at trial? The jury is going to hate you. Because it proves you’ve been lying about everything for twenty-five years. If you lied about something as big as who your daughter’s mother is, what else did you lie about? The embezzlement? The letter? Evelyn’s death?”
He stood up.
“Here’s the new deal, Diane. You plead guilty to all the embezzlement charges. You cooperate fully with the police in the murder investigation. You give sworn testimony against Tyler about the deck incident. About the plan to invalidate the will. About everything. And in return… we won’t introduce the birth certificate during the fraud trial. We’ll save it for the murder trial. Which means you might only get twenty years instead of life.”
He leaned over the table.
“You have until five p.m. tomorrow to accept. After that? We file everything. The birth certificate. The journal. the insurance policy. All of it. And you spend the rest of your natural life in a cell with a roommate named Bertha who thinks you look cute.”
He closed his briefcase.
“Come on, Charlotte. We’re done here.”
I stood up.
Mom was still sitting there, staring at the birth certificate like it was a snake.
As I walked past her, she grabbed my wrist.
Her hand was like ice.
“Charlotte,” she whispered. “Please. Don’t do this. I’m your mother.”
I pulled my hand away.
“No, Diane. You’re not. My mother was Evelyn. And you killed her.”
We walked out.
Strand was already yelling at Mom as the door closed behind us.
Mr. Harris let out a long breath as we got in the elevator.
“Well. That went about as well as could be expected.”
“You think she’ll take the deal?”
“Strand will make her take it. He’s an ambulance chaser, but he’s not stupid. He knows that birth certificate destroys her credibility completely. Without credibility, she can’t win anything. The only question is whether she’ll roll on Tyler to save herself.”
The elevator doors opened on the ground floor.
Detective Alvarez was waiting for us by the front door.
She didn’t look happy.
“Bad news,” she said. “The judge signed the order to exhume Evelyn’s body. But when we got to the cemetery… someone beat us to it.”
My stomach dropped.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the grave was already dug up. The casket was gone. Some time last night. Security camera at the cemetery gate was disabled. No witnesses. No tire tracks. Nothing.”
May you like
She looked right at me.
“Somebody didn’t want us running that toxicology report.”
